Netgear now touting open source WRT-compatible wireless router

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Fri Jul 4 11:16:07 EDT 2008


On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 8:55 AM, Lloyd Kvam <lkvam at venix.com> wrote:
>> USB and GigE too; neat.
>
> Hopefully that is true.  The port line in the specs says
>        Ports 1 x 10/100M WAN; 4 x 10/100M LAN

  NewEgg's never been terribly good at transcribing mfg specs.  Like
their slogan says, "Once you know".  If you haven't down-selected to a
given model yet, research is best done elsewhere.  :)

  The LinkSys specs (http://tinyurl.com/WRT610N) says it's a 4-port
gigabit Ethernet switch on the LAN side.  What I don't know is if it's
a managed switch or not, or if the "Internet" port is included.  One
of the cool things about the WRT54G* line is that all five Ethernet
ports are actually just ports on a managed switch ASIC.  Port
differentiation is done though VLANs.  This makes it a handy, compact,
cheap managed switch.  It might be that the WRT610N just has a 4-port
unmanaged switch ASIC for the LAN side.

  I also see they've changed the form-factor.  I think that's too bad;
I liked the old one better.  It was square, stackable, had easy to see
LEDs, and external (and mostly removable) antennas .  This new one
looks like it sacrifices all that.  And uses those blue LEDs that I'm
getting so sick of.  Form over function, no doubt..  Marketing.  Sigh.

-- Ben


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