14 DAY TRIAL // Netgear is undoubtedly one of the leading manufacturers of networking products, holding a number of successful models designed for the consumer market. The company announced yesterday the launch of the Open Source Wireless-G Router (WGR614L), designed to allow users to mess around with the specifications of their router.
Netgear's new device has been built for high-performance and boasts a 240MHz MIPS32(R) CPU core with 16KB of instruction cache, 16KB of data cache and 1KB of pre-fetch cache. The Open Source Wireless-G Router also incorporates 4MB of flash memory and 16 MB of RAM. On the physical side, the WGR614L integrates two external 2 dBi antennas and a second internal diversity antenna, which make it suitable for enhanced performance and range.
But the product's most interesting feature is its open-source Linux-based Tomato and DD-WRT firmware. Furthermore, the company announced that its product would soon support OpenWRT. Coming to back up Netgear's new device, an open source router community will provide source firmware downloads, forums, blogs, articles, source code and user guides, offering users all the help they need to make their product functional.
"The launch of the WGR614L is significant to the open source community as there has been a growing demand for more powerful platforms to support a rapidly growing segment of open source enthusiasts that are seeking to create more robust, commercial-grade applications for their wireless routers," stated Som Pal Choudhury, senior product line manager for advanced wireless at NETGEAR.
Performance-wise, Netgear's Open Source Wireless-G Router features a 10/100 Internet WAN port and a four-port 10/100 LAN switch. It also incorporates an 802.11g access point to support wireless connectivity at speeds of up to 54 Mbps. In terms of security, the WGR614L offers support for 40-, 128- and 152-bit WEP encryption, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), WPA2-PSK and Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS).
The new router is available for purchase in the US for $69.