Free at Last: Rid of the Netgear KWGR614 Router

      Or, "A Tale of Two Routers"

Changing out this not-cheap, piece of junk router for a D-Link 655, I found myself forced to reflect on why I struggled for eight months of home-type use with click-stop-clicking and running time-consuming networking restarters.  Part of it was faith in Netgear, since my other router from them worked great for years.  Most of it was, I think, not having googled enough to find Thibuat Coler's article on his experiences with this POS router.

Part of it was the fact that, fortunately, I don't spend a ton of time at home using the Internet (except for streaming, which, needless to say, was mostly prevented by the router).  Part of it was the suspicion that if I just waited long enough, some heaven-sent Ubuntu update would fix the problem.  What finally drove me to spend the time to fix it was the sheer time-consuming nature of using the Internet from home.  The straw on the camel's back was certainly the marketing of the router.  I can still hear, in my mind's ear, the Fry's associate telling me that "this one is an open-source router oriented to Linux users." 

After having to use Firefox's JavaScript debugger to get through the IE-only installation wizard, I gave Netgear the benefit of the doubt and reported the bug.  I later installed the firmware update as it became available.  I went through the whole customer service troubleshooting procedure with a helpful associate, which moved the situation from worse to only bad.

Interestingly, some sites were markedly worse than others.  Although the early Yahoo E-Mail Beta was certainly a hog, the networking problems I had made it unusable.  So for months I was back on the Yahoo E-mail "classic".    Initially, I thought the streaming problems were due to poor Flash support on Linux and Mac (I use both at home), so I cancelled a subscription where I had built up a great set of playlists. 

In any case, I am "free at last" now with an Internet conection that works great, thanks to the D-Link 655 router.  There are some good deals for that router (in new condition) on eBay; that's how I got mine.  All in all, after all of this I am asking Netgear for a full refund for this router.  Stay tuned -- we'll see what they say.