Netgear prints this site on their box and touts their use of open source firmware; however, I'm just not seeing any benefits.
1. If the stock firmware was good, we wouldn't all be looking for open source alternatives.
2. The guys doing the development seem like hobbyists (that's not a bad thing), but for Netgear to promote the site, I'd expect some full-time developers to be assigned to making dd-wrt, tomato, or openwrt work on the routers.
I've used two routers, flashed the firmware from this site because the stock firmware was either buggy or didn't support openvpn client running on the router. The "open source" solutions also aren't working. I didn't come here to learn to program my own router, but rather to use existing third-party firmware. However, it looks like the open source stuff has to be shoehorned to fit into the Netgear hardware and then doesn't work well once it has.
I chose Netgear because it seemed to support the open source community rather than try to hinder it, but it actually seems that Netgear is just trying to use the community as a sales tool without actually offering any added value.
I'm not sure where to turn at this point for quality networking products that are feature-rich and just work.
r7500v2 (and now the thread has disappeared), and R6200v2. Both were from here.
You could try Asus routers, particularly with the RMerlin firmware. I've been running an RT-AC87U w/RMerlin as my primary router for some time, and it's been great.
I agree, it's a shame there isn't more substance behind Netgear's marketing of their open source 'support'. I have to say Asus is making less noise, but providing more tangible support indirectly through RMerlin, e.g. supplying him with prerelease hardware, backporting his fixes into their codebase, etc.
I recently purchased a R7800 router, whose hardware is clearly superior to that of the RT-AC87U, but the stock firmware is a major disappointment relative to the Asus routers (particularly with the tweaked RMerlin firmware).
Sadly, great hardware with disappointing firmware yields a disappointing product. At least the firmware can be improved over time.
So for now, I won't be replacing my AC87U with the R7800, I like the Qualcomm hardware and SDK (though I wish it was current with OpenWRT), and will hang onto it and tinker until it 'catches up'.
Maybe I can pick Tathagata's brain, too ;)
If Broadcom were providing better hardware/SDKs with less proprietary code and a modern kernel, But large chunks of proprietary code that's tied to the 2.6 kernel architecture means I doubt that'll happen anytime soon. Since Asus seems to be in bed with Broadcom, at least for the current router range, I decided to 'vote with my feet' and find something superior and non-Broadcom.
Hopefully the OpenWRT development community will be motivated to unleash the potential of the Qualcomm/Atheros IPQ806x chipsets. And Netgear will engage a little more effectively with the open source community.