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Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router"
Harald Welte is not impressed with Netgear's "open source router," which includes binary-only kernel modules. "Netgear as the vendor is simply relying on the fact that none of the authors who have written parts of the kernel against which their binary-only module links will ever make copyright claims against them.
One would have hoped that Netgear did thoroughly study the Open Source market that they're trying to address. Apparently they either did not do that, or they chose to ignore the values/rules by which this community works, or they had somebody with limited understanding to advise them on this."
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Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 16:12 UTC (Wed) by boerner (guest, #4247) [Link]
Is there a list anywhere of routers that have all hardware supported by open source drivers? I have seen the compatibility lists on sites like OpenWRT, but is there a list of 'recommended' routers based on being open?
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 16:20 UTC (Wed) by pheldens (guest, #19366) [Link]
another very good router distro is pfsense (bsd based)
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 16:33 UTC (Wed) by zsouthboy (subscriber, #60295) [Link]
I second that. It even has a slick web gui to show the boss.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 16:40 UTC (Wed) by boerner (guest, #4247) [Link]
I know there are many software options, but is there a best hardware list (for any distro) in terms of 'openness'?
I have looked at the Alix boards (http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm), but I still have to add a wireless card and the price starts to balloon up. I just want to buy one box and go...
I have a Linksys WRT54GL running OpenWRT, which is well supported, but is kind of showing its age...
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 16:49 UTC (Wed) by Russ.Dill@gmail.com (subscriber, #52805) [Link]
Why didn't the internets tell me about these boards sooner?!?!
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 17:47 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Geode boards are slow, energy hungry, and expensive compared to contemporary ARM systems, but are very nice if x86 compatibility is a requirement. Makes things easy if your familiar with dealing with BIOSes and such.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 19:06 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Alix boards actually come with a nice and simple BIOS: simple setup from a serial console, very few options, quick boot, PXE support.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 8, 2009 2:04 UTC (Thu) by Viddy (subscriber, #33288) [Link]
I have this alix board at home: http://www.pcengines.ch/alix6b2.htm - its
fantastic. I debootstrap'ed ubuntu 8.04? on to a flash card, compiled a kernel with geode support into it, made that into a deb package, installed it and ... it just goes. Apart from the kernel, the geode cpu seems to be happy with the i386 package set from ubuntu - I can apt-get update/upgrade it without issue. Its not super fast, but its great for routing. Case is above ambient temperature, but not significantly so, certainly not as warm as the wrt54gl sitting next to it. Serial console is a bit of a irritation, but once going is fine.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 8, 2009 5:30 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Huh? The Ubuntu default kernel does not support it?
Well, I run a Debian -486 kernel on mine.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 16:52 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]
As far as I know the wiresets that are AP's are mostly closed source as the companies (broadcom, cisco) are not wanting to open up those drivers. I believe the various switching parts are what they consider the most private.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 17:56 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Most companies are using Broadcom SoC which feature closed source drivers for Linux. Probably because they are very cheap and is what people have been using for years now.
Linux mac80211 protocol stack has matured to the point now to were it is about up to the same speed that the Madwifi drivers were at a few years ago and, depending on the specific capabilities of the hardware, can work very well as a Open Source AP.
The broadcom reverse engineered drivers can work decently as a replacement for the proprietary Linux drivers.. this is the only way you can use a remotely modern kernel on one of those APs. They still require some work and are not a drop-in replacement, but it is possible to run those things without the proprietary drivers.
The nice thing about buying a board with a separate MiniPCI slot you can go out and buy one of the nice Atheros units that will have good open source support.
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 20:52 UTC (Wed) by pheldens (guest, #19366) [Link]
we use pfsense on pcengines amd boards, they are a bit more expensive than consumer stuff but they run ok, another maker of comparable hardware is soekris.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 8, 2009 15:53 UTC (Thu) by maro (subscriber, #34315) [Link]
> I know there are many software options, but is there a best hardware list
> (for any distro) in terms of 'openness'?
[...]
> I have a Linksys WRT54GL running OpenWRT, which is well supported, but is
The Linksys WRT160NL was recommended[1] in the comments to the original Netgear announcement here on LWN[2]. Just got mine with the mail today, installing OpenWRT on it this evening if time permits :)
[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/355693/
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 8, 2009 3:28 UTC (Thu) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
Lets not forget that pfsense is a beefed up m0n0wall (http://m0n0.ch/wall).
It gets the xml configuration, php init scripts, and slick webui all from m0n0wall.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 9, 2009 11:46 UTC (Fri) by pimlottc (guest, #44833) [Link]
But that's not the same thing, is it? From what I can tell, pfsense only runs on traditional PCs, not on embedded devices like *WRT.
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 17:48 UTC (Wed) by DaleQ (subscriber, #4004) [Link]
The ROBIN forums [1] discuss hardware for mesh networking.
The firmware is based on Openwrt. I believe this implies; - Atheros chipset -- open drivers
[1] http://robin.forumup.it/index.php?c=3&mforum=robin
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Oct 7, 2009 22:39 UTC (Wed) by mollison (subscriber, #56735) [Link]
Indeed, ROBIN is open source and is based on OpenWRT. A good source of info on ROBIN is the ROBIN homepage [1]. Another good source of information on this topic is the Open-Mesh project [2], which hosts a free dashboard to manage your network, and sells Atheros-chipset APs. There is also an open source dashboard available which you can run on your own server, called OrangeMesh.
ROBIN is intended for mesh networks, but can also be used for normal APs (which is just a mesh network with 1 node...)
Welte: Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router" Posted Feb 13, 2010 1:15 UTC (Sat) by Jane (guest, #63558) [Link]
Indeed, I can testify to how horrible this product really is.
It is not open source. It does run dd-wrt, (at least) but you have to install it yourself with a high probability that you'll end up with a brick.
I was unlucky enough to get acquainted with this crap. I did get dd-wrt running on it... for 8 days. Then rebooted into a brick.
F**k Netgear.
Sincerely, Jane
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