Netgear ADSL DG934G router for £10? Surely not!

[Hands0n]

Yes, surely so Very nice too. I'd recommend this for anyone wanting a new/replacement ADSL router. Why spend £s?

First the background. I have recently taken up Sky's Max broadband package. Being of the nervous disposition I wanted to get a backup for my router in case it went wrong. Not that Netgear kit is particularly weak, but I am serviced with an overhead BT phone line and in the past have had problems with equipment damaged during storms, even with lightning arrestor and anti-surge filters in line. That and I operate a risk averse brain

Looking around the various forums I have found Skyuser.co.uk to be probably the best of breed for Sky users. And in there are some interesting articles on how to use non-Sky routers, but also how to re-flash the Sky DG834 and DG934 series to generic Netgear firmware.

Now, before I go on I have to tell you that this is all strictly against Sky's T&Cs that you sign up to, and if you try any of this you do so at your own risk.

The trick to re-flashing the Sky DG934 (black phase 2) router is in working around a loophole in the Netgear recovery tool. This is described here for the full thread or here for the specific article. There is a link to the Netgear site to get the latest 4.0.1.37 firmware that works in the DG934 - don't be alarmed that it is for the DG834, it does work fine, the DG934 is essentially a DG834 V3 repackaged.

Next up, I needed a spare router and Sky do not sell these, so it was off to eBay for a search. On eBay you will find millions of the older phase 1 white Netgear routers. I would suggest staying away from those unless you specifically want/need one. It did not take very much searching to find what I was after, with only a few hours bidding left, and later that day I won the box for £4.99, with postage of the same I had a total outlay of tuppence under a tenner Very nice.

It takes about ten minutes to update the firmware after which you are left with a generic Netgear DG834G V3 with full functionality. The Version 4.0.1.37 firmware is feature packed with tons of features and a superb rendition of VPN. I like. I like it a lot.