Netgear Helps Create ‘All-Access Home’

By Colleen Bohen -- TWICE, 1/9/2008 4:06:00 PM

Las Vegas — Professing that customers should be able to use their high-speed broadband Internet as intuitively as one uses home heating and electricity, Netgear’s chairman, CEO and founder Patrick Lo highlighted three key technologies that can be found in some of the 18 new products his company is unveiling during International CES.

The three highlighted areas included Netgear’s next-generation line of Wireless-N products, the company’s new line of ReadyNAS desktop network storage products, and the HD/Gaming 5 GHz Wireless-N networking kit. Lo indicated that all three could help consumers to achieve an “all-access home.”

The company’s next-generation Wireless-N products incorporate “metamaterial” antenna technology, said to deliver faster speeds at longer ranges. According to a company release, the metamaterial technology has “unique transmission properties that provides the highest level of quality reliability and signal optimization even in dense integrated circuit designs.” The technology is incorporated in all of Netgear’s next-generation RangeMax Wireless-N products including the new RangeMax dual-band Wireless-N router, RangeMax Wireless-N gigabit router, the RangeMax dual-band Wireless-N USB 2.0 adapter and the Wireless-N MoCa router.

Netgear’s new line of ReadyNAS desktop network storage products is “centrally store and shares all your digital media,” according to Netgear’s product marketing VP Vivek Pathela. The devices are available in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB models. The products feature integrated support for BitTorrent so users can download digital content directly to the ReadyNAS Duo and steam that content through a media adapter without requiring the use of a networked computer. They also feature a front-mounted USB port allowing digital images to be stored directly from the camera. Also, when equipped with an optional second drive, the devices automatically mirror all digital data to protect against data loss due to a disk failure using the company’s own patent-pending X-Raid technology.

Finally, the company’s HD/Gasming 5GHz Wireless-N networking kit is designed to take any existing home network and turn it into a high-speed Wireless-N network. According to a release, the product can connect to any existing router or gateway and provide “more wireless channels, less interference and better, more reliable, connections to enable high-performance network gaming and simultaneously streaming high-definition videos at the highest-possible Wireless-N speeds.”