Netgear hails new high-speed Wi-Fi antennas

 

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Posted on 6 Jan 2008 at 18:10

Netgear claims its new internal antenna technology will deliver high-speed wireless networking for the HD generation.

Click here for our full coverage from CES 2008

The new "Metamaterial" technology crams eight internal antennas into all new Netgear routers, including the freshly announced RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Router. The company claims that, in combination, the eight antennas can direct signal to specifically targeted devices on the home network, without creating signal interference with one another.

The new router is also dual-band, which means it can deliver an 802.11n signal over both the 5GHz and older 2.4GHz frequencies. 5GHz provides 20 new wireless channels, helping to avoid interference with other wireless devices and, crucially, neighbours' Wi-Fi networks.

"There are lots of things interfering with your wireless network," Vivek Pathela, Netgear's vice president of product marketing, told journalists at CES 2008 today. "Microwave ovens, Bluetooth devices, baby monitors, but especially other wireless networks. It's severely limiting for HD video streaming or online gaming.

"With the Metamaterial Antennas, we're giving you really good coverage with 5GHz connections."

Pathela claims Netgear has "had to work really hard" to make the eight internal antennas work. "It's always better to have many antennas. Sticking antennas outside the unit is really ugly," he claims.

The RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Router will cost $129 and will launch later this month.

HD gaming

Amongst the 18 products Netgear launched today, the company unveiled its HD/Gaming 5 GHz Wireless-N Networking Kit. The two-piece kit uses proprietary technology to bridge the 802.11n signal running between your router and games consoles or HD television equipment.

Netgear demonstrated the kit simultaneously running an Halo 3 online gaming session on the Xbox 360 and an HD video streamed from a NAS box to a HDTV, without any obvious lag or glitches - although such close proximity demonstrations always have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The gaming device once again runs in the 5GHz band to avoid interference, and applies automatic QoS to ensure the gaming and video streams are given highest priority across the network. It also offers an ad-hoc mode for peer-to-peer wireless gaming.

The HD/Gaming 5 GHz Wireless-N Networking Kit will cost $229 for two units, and will ship later this month.

NAS launch

Finally, Netgear also used the CES stage to launch a very sleek and remarkably compact NAS drive. The ReadyNAS Duo comes in three configurations, ranging from 500GB to 1TB of storage, although each of the two hot-swappable drive bays can accomodate 1TB drives.

All of the user's data is mirrored on the two drives, and streaming even continues uninterrupted if one of the drives if removed. Owners can also plug their digital camera straight into the front of the ReadyNAS Duo and have all their pictures copied to the drive and made instantly available to connected devices, including HD televisions and set-top boxes.

The ReadyNAS Duo will cost $499 and will be available by the Spring.

Click here for our full coverage from CES 2008

Author: Barry Collins in Las Vegas