Your Firmware Plans For the WGR614L - Which Is Your Pick?

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Peter Redmer
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Your Firmware Plans For the WGR614L - Which Is Your Pick?

The WGR614L is coming soon, and is slated to be the next great open source router.  it's going to be compatible with a number of third party firmwares, including Tomato, DD-WRT, and others.

Which firmware is your favorite?  Tell us about which one you'll put on your WGR614L, and why.

Brandon C
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DD-WRT is what I like right

DD-WRT is what I like right now. Have used Sveasoft stuff but keep going back to DD-WRT

Peter Redmer
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Yes, I've had good luck with

Yes, I've had good luck with DD-WRT as well.  It's very flexible and easy to change the various options.  I use game consoles to access the internet (i.e., Nintendo DS and others) and it made it easy to edit certain features to help me do this.  I.E., setting static IP's, putting certain IP's in the DMZ, etc. 

Jeff Liebermann
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DD-WRT is what I currently

DD-WRT is what I currently use. Mostly on Buffalo and Linksys hardware. The main advantage to me is that I can save a configuration file, transplant it to a completely different router running DD-WRT, and it will (usually) work. The feature list is extensive and I do use many of the obscure features (SNMP, static routes, complex firewalls, WPA, etc).

I've also used OpenWRT. It has the advantage of eating less RAM as it can work without a web based user interface. This is handy when I want to add features and functions, such as MRTG for graphing. It works well, but the level of expertise required is far greater than DD-WRT due to the direct editing of config files. There's a web interface available, but I need the RAM for other things. The list of supported hardware is somewhat larger than DD-WRT.

I haven't tried Tomato but it appears to be aimed at users that require built in graphs and traffic monitoring.

I have personal issues against Sveasoft and will not make that mistake again.

My main interest in transplanting open source firmware to the WGR-614 is to add much needed features and create a "universal" device. That's where I can stock a single wireless device, that can act as a router, access point, client bridge, WPA bridge, transparent bridge, repeater, and possibly print server. I see no reason why these have to be individual products when it has been adequately demonstrated that open source firmware can do all of these things in a single package. At the same time, the expanded feature list allows me to do do things that only the expensive routers can currently provide, such as traffic monitoring, SNMP, NetFlow, remote admin, etc. It's a rare installation where I use all of these features, but all of them will probably be used individually. For example, when I needed a wireless router with a dual SSID feature, I didn't buy an expensive Sonicwall router. I bought a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 (from Hong Kong) and installed DD-WRT v24 RC6.2.

Peter Redmer
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DD-WRT for the WGR614L is now

DD-WRT for the WGR614L is now available for download, and you can get it here:

Download DD-WRT

The installation guide is now available as well, and covers installing the firmware either with or without a serial console:

DD-WRT Installation Guide

Brandon C
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Peter Redmer said: The

Peter Redmer said: The installation guide is now available as well, and covers installing the firmware either with or without a serial console:
DD-WRT Installation Guide

Cool, thanks for the heads up.

rektide
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i have a stack of WGT634U's

i have a stack of WGT634U's and they all have OpenWRT. The advantage of the WGT634U is that it has 8MB flash, USB2.0, and onboard crypto. It is unfortunately discontinued, but I would never buy a router without USB 2.0. OpenWRT is a great distro because it has a very slick and stripped down integrated package management based off of Debian/Ubuntu's dpkg, called ipkg, and the package library is huge.

twindragon6
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DD-WRT, Mostly because like

DD-WRT, Mostly because like their interface better.

user294
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> I would never buy a router

> I would never buy a router without USB 2.0.
Same here.I like ability to share my usb HDD and SD card reader over network.As for developers this also means ability to store lots of stuff on USB devices, develop funny autonomous http\ftp\torrent download solutions and drive sharing, web camera stuff etc so small device turns into a really powerful and featured thing and open source developers can greatly add up here (often even beating stock firmware implementations in both features set and overall quality).

So, in short I like idea a lots but specific implementation ... uhmmm... it could be better.That's probably why I stick for a while to another device, which has 32MB RAM, 8Mb flash, 264MHz CPU (up to 300MHz with proper cooling) and 2xUSB 2.0 ports, all this fun priced at most as $90..$100 so it's quite popular because of rich set of features and there is some custom firmwares specially targeted exactly this device to use ALL device features to a maximum.IMHO NetGear can adopt such idea.This even leads to increased popularity of specific device and even does not directly helps competitors to boost their devices popularity, since their devices may lack port or even do not have all needed features in their hardware, he-he :)

blackmacbook
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Which third party firmware

Which third party firmware available in myopenrouter.com fully work with the wgr614v8? So far, the current tomato and dd-wrt download aren't very stable, mainly LED not functioning correctly.