NETGEAR First With Draft-n In ADSL2+ Modem

Written by Adam Gosling

Tuesday, 12 September 2006

Users wanting instant access to the latest and greatest speeds for their feeds can now pick up a NETGEAR ADSL2+ modem with integrated draft 802.11n wireless access point. Capable of delivering a streaking 270Mbps to other RangeMax NEXT devices, the DG834N has an integrated ADSL2+ modem which can connect to the Internet at 24Mbps (depending on your location and service provider). The RangeMax wireless Access Point is 15 times faster than Standards-based 802.11g products. This is fast enough to transfer a 6MB MP3 in seconds or a 1GB movie in minutes. It also delivers 10 times the coverage thanks to the advanced MIMO (Multi-In, Multi-Out) technology, which eliminates dead spots and ensures optimal performance. Ian McLean, NETGEAR Asia Pacific vice president said: "NETGEAR is working to ensure every firmware update makes the pre-n RangeMax NEXT product line better and smarter. "Despite recent hype, there are no greater issues with pre-N products than there were with 802.11g products when first released," concluded McLean. McLean is referring to stories like this and this, which point out that the product you buy today may not be compatible with 802.11n products released in the future. It may also not work very well with draft 802.11n equipment manufactured by other vendors. As mobilised has said before, buy this at your own risk. If you have a need (or desire) for really fast wireless networking today, then at $399 for the DG834N this will do the job. But if you are planning to buy a lot of Draft 1.0 products to fit out your campus-wide network with a hundred PC adapters, think long and hard about it. New versions of 802.11n will be released in the second or third quarter next year which will be closer to the final Standards. The final, fully compliant and interoperable Standards-based equipment won't appear until 2008 - which is a long time to wait. The adoption of open industry standards is a cornerstone of the high tech industry which led to the introduction of devices like the personal computer, mobile phones and the Internet. Industry standards helped make these technologies ubiquitous and affordable. Industry standards also lead lower prices by increasing competition in the manufacture of interoperable products. Prior to the widespread adoption of Industry Standards such as 802.11 it was possible for device manufacturers to ‘lock-in' their customers forcing them to pay a premium price to buy additional equipment that would work with their existing equipment. Although Draft 1.0 802.11 specified wireless networking equipment initially sold well as early adopters quickly snapped up the high-performance technology, fears over equipment obsolescence has reportedly caused a slow-down in device sales after the Standards Committee voted against the adoption of the Draft 1.0 specifications at a meeting in May this year. The Standards setting process has been hampered as different device and chipset manufacturers have jockeyed to gain the upper hand over their competitors. To try to re-start the sales of non-standard WLAN equipment and to allay customer fears that interoperability between different vendor's devices the industry's certification authority has taken the unprecedented step of agreeing to the certification of device based on the Draft 2.0 standard which will hopefully be agreed early next year. Existing wireless network products based on the 11 Mbps 802.11b and 54MBps 802.11g Standards will still connect to the DG834N device. And as the NETGEAR announcement states: "The RangeMax NEXT Wireless ADSL2+ Modem Gateway interoperates at 270Mbps with other products powered with Intensi-fi." Intensi-fi is Broadcom's brand for chipsets which implement the first draft of the 802.11n standard. The company has sold more than 1 million chipsets to a range of vendors including Linksys, Netgear and Buffalo (Uniden) as well as notebook vendors such as Acer and Dell. Broadcom has also conducted its own interoperability tests with competing WLAN chip manufacturer, Atheros which has its own implementation of the Draft 1.0 802.11n specifications called XSPAN. The tests focused on the mandatory features in the Draft 1.0 specifications and one optional element - 40 MHz channel bandwidths - which remain a contentious issue among members of the Standards Committee. The Broadcom and Atheros engineers were able to demonstrate transfer speeds in excess of 100Mbs bi-directional. Since the APs tested have 10/100 Fast Ethernet ports, which by definition cannot exceed 100Mbps in a single direction, in order to demonstrate wireless throughput above 100Mbps the tests ran traffic in both directions (uplink and downlink) simultaneously. However, there is no stated or implicit guarantee that this would work in your configuration. Depending on the final outcome of the standards setting process, it may be possible to upgrade equipment based on the Draft specifications with a relatively simple firmware update. Related news items Linksys Releases Draft-N For SMBs -30/01/2007 Qualcomm Acquires Airgo -04/12/2006 WLAN Win For CSIRO -15/11/2006 HP Will Also Offer Draft n Notebooks -09/11/2006 Lenovo To Put Draft-802.11n In Notebooks -08/11/2006 Newer news items Easy VoIP System For Mobile Makers -16/03/2007 Draft N Inches Forward -14/03/2007 Agere Sells Wireless Patents -02/03/2007 Atheros Reaches 100 Million Chip Landmark -27/02/2007 Symbol Builds A Bridge Between RFID and WLAN -07/12/2006 Older news items Pre-N WLAN Sales Grind To A Halt -06/09/2006 aql Offers Brits Free WoVLAN From Mobiles -05/09/2006 New Atheros Silicon To Lower Pre-N Cost -30/08/2006 The End Of Open WLAN Standards -16/08/2006 Linksys RangeBooster Plays Nicely With Other Nets -07/08/2006 Tag This Now: