San Mateo, Calif.-based Vyatta announced the free Open Flexible Router (OFR) last week and said it would offer technical assistance and upgrades for an annual fee starting at US$497. The company touted the OFR's ability to support high-availability routing with the kind of security that large companies expect.

"Until now, users have had little choice but to accept the slow-changing and feature-bloated, closed-source solutions on the market -- and pay a high price in the process," said Vyatta CEO Kelly Herrell.

Lance Knox, a networking consultant to nonprofit groups who works in Pittsburgh, said he installed OFR on a Pentium 3-based PC that was "headed for the dumpster" and uses the software to effectively route data between two buildings at a Pennsylvania mental health center. Each of the buildings has a separate LAN for security and privacy purposes, but Knox explained that he needed an inexpensive link for limited communications.

"It solves a basic routing issue and avoids passing on an exorbitant routing cost," Knox said. Even paying $500 for a Cisco Systems Inc. router would have been tough for the nonprofit, he said. The open-source Vyatta router has been in use for about a month with no problems, he said.

Knox has not tested how scalable the new router is but said it "could definitely handle a branch-office routing need" for a larger business.