As soon as my next paycheck comes in, I'm seriously thinking about picking up Netgear's new WGR614L wired/wireless-G router. It's yet another of the small but growing pool of hardware devices (along with some of Netgear's own earlier routers) designed with the hacker in mind.

The device itself -- it's even branded as an open source device on Netgear's own pages -- offers a basic clutch of specs apart from the hackability. On the open source side of things, there's the community portal site My Open Router, with a slew of articles about the device -- details about how to get the WGR614L up and running, how to configure the popular open source Tomato router firmware (DD-WRT firmware is also available), and even how to recover the router from being bricked if you make a mistake. (The latter requires some minor surgery and is probably not for the faint of heart!)

The one big drawback of this unit, for me: no Gigabit Ethernet for the wired ports. Gigabit Ethernet is no longer exotic; most of my machines now support it natively. Given how much time I spend shuttling stuff from one machine to the other, it would be more than worth it.

If you've had experiences with open source router hardware on your own, sound off below; I'd love to hear from you.