I recently bought what was labeled as a WGR614L from Amazon.com (actually sold by TigerDirect as an afiliate, I belive), and the box has a big sticker on the front that says "WGR614L Open-source Wireless-G Router". I bought this device specifically to encourage Netgear to support open-source hardware, and wanted the ability to install third-party firmware. However, when I tried to do so (with both the DD-WRT and Tomato firmware files) I got the error "Firmware upgrade failed. Please check your file." I haven't found anything on the forums that would indicate that this is a known error.
Now on further investigation, I am not even sure the unit I have here is actually the WGR614L I paid for. The sticker on the bottom of the router says "WGR614v9", and the status page says:
Account Name WGR614V9
Hardware Version V9
Firmware Version V1.0.9_1.0.1NA
On this post
http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/10311/WGR614L-really-a-WG614v9/
a Netgear employee stated that some WGR614v9 routers were mistakenly shipped out labeled as WGR614L. Perhaps I received one of these mislabeled units in error? What should I do about it?
I would email Som, in the post you mentioned. Sounds like he will take care of things.
Yes, Som fixed me up with a v8 router that I was able to install DD-WRT on. I'm glad Netgear cares about customer service :-)