802.11b Networking News reportedit first - and Slashdot followed up. Yes, that's right, the new Sputnik Community Gateway has been formally released.

The most important new features are:

PCI card support
PLX card support
Linux kernel 2.4.18 (latest and greatest)
Enhanced autoconfig of 802.11b card drivers
Support for the latest PCMCIA cards based on both the Intersil PRISM 2 and PRISM 2.5 chipsets
Smaller ISO image (was 49 MB, now 30 MB)

Understandably, support for PCI/PLX cards has been the most requested feature. We worked with Jouni Malinen to get some bugs in the PCI/PLX Linux drivers fixed and he really came through. We've seen significantly improved bandwidth figures when using the PCI cards - on the order of a 20-30% improvement over the PCMCIA cards. Now people can create APs using just about any old hardware, including those 486 doorstops piled up in basements across the land.

This release also coincides with a major website update that reflects our changed focus on building enterprise products. We are not going to charge for the Sputnik Network, ever. We hope that community networks will use the Network as an easy way to roam, and developers will use it to test out their Sputnik apps.

We're still working on the Enterprise gateway, which has a whole bunch of other cool features, including the robust backend management console, rogue AP detection, and more. Expect that release this summer.