A couple of months earlier, I’ve got a ZyXEL NBG4615 and a NETGEAR WNR3500L GigE 802.11n routers in the attempt to replace my buggy 2Wire. Anyhow, it seems like neither one wants to work with my static ip setup, trying to NAT my static subnet instead of simply passing it through.

The WNR3500L is marketed by NETGEAR as their “open-source router”. So, what does this actually entail?

First off, NETGEAR has been selling the v2 version of 3500L since the summer of 2011, in other words, since about 5 months ago, and there is still not a single open-source firmware released for the “open-source router” WNR3500Lv2, which has been on the market, as just mentioned a sec ago, for almost half a year now!

Second, what is actually behind all those firmwares, that are advertised to work with 3500L? The myopenrouter.com has a whole list!

DD-WRT.com. Turns out, it has become commercial a few years back, and either way, the last update for the 3500L firmware, and the whole release in general, is dated quite a while back; seems like the whole project is no longer really active or engaged in much development. I cannot believe they haven’t had any bugs in about 2 to 4 years since the last v24 release in 2008/2009. Supposedly, IPv6 wouldn’t work by default, either. In addition, it seems like DD-WRT has a history of GPL violations itself, and in general seems kinda fishy. Some good story about DD-WRT and stuff at http://bitsum.com/about-ddwrt.htm, not sure how much is true, but I think stuff adds up very much so.

OpenWrt.org? Seems interesting, and seems like it’s probably the one I might be interested in using, since they have a CLI philosophy (by default comes with no GUI?), and seem to be really a true OSS project, instead of being a commercial product disguised to be an OSS one like DD-WRT. But, apparently, the official web-site states that WNR3500L is not supported, or, only “may be supported”. WTF?

Tomato. Apparently, a few variations exist, and the project indeed sounds interesting. The last official incarnation is called TomatoUSB.org, but it has been stagnant for a little over a year, too. Might be worth checking out, however, IPv6 GUI is only available in git, without any official builds yet, supposedly.

Now, let’s go back to myopenrouter.com. The site is a joke. NETGEAR pays a company called CaptiveNetworks.com to run the site for them, and CaptiveNetworks employs some annoying lamer to act as an administrator of the site. The site is a questionable and made up fake “community”, full of confused users, unsorted info and mods of questionable origins. Apparently, some mods they publish are authored by anonymous users which don’t even have any kind of web-site whatsoever! Imagine, running software on your gateway that’s been written by a guy named Toastman, who hosts this said software on some file host web-site, with no contact information, or changelogs, or anything. Nice, eh? Nothing against Toastman personally, seems like a nice guy with a friendly userpic, and I’m sure his builds are good, too.

Anyhow, the whole open router thing is a big disappointment. Should probably find an x86 box, and install pfSense or even straight my own version of OpenBSD. Shuttle XG41 with dual GigE, DDR3 and LGA775 for 154 USD seems like an attractive offer, LGA775 Dual-Core 45nm Wolfdale processors start at just under 50 bucks (Celeron and Pentium). The http://pcengines.ch/alix2d13.htm and «Netgate m1n1wall 2D13 Red» (http://store.netgate.com/-P218.aspx) seems very interesting, too, although with shipping and stuff, it’s essentially in the same price range as a GigE solution for a mere 100Mbps system. However, pcengines.ch is definitely much more competitive than the overpriced Soekris (checkout their official stores: PC Engines Alix.2d13 (LX800 / 256MB / 3 LAN) costs only 115 USD! Enclosures are 10 bucks! Compare to Soekris, where similar net5501-60 runs for 253 USD, over twice as much!), so I do have a feeling that when their GigE solutions will come out, it’ll make a very reasonable x86 router.