Netgear 108 Mbps Wireless

Does anyone know why they are only producing routers supporting 108 Mbps for the home market?

You can get one aimed at the business market but its £150.

Cheers

[Chris W]

What is to stop you using one aimed at the home market for your business?

Unless of course you want one with more features... in which case you will be look at higher prices anyway....

[LooeyUK]

I think theyve released it for home because of the other things they have released for the home market. They have got a music player that connects up to your hifi etc...

Sorry, what i meant is that if you want one of their 108mbps wireless access points it (almost) has to be the router because they dont do a 108mbps access point as a stand alone bit of hardware

[Stuart W]

If you use a 108Mbps card in your PC, you can set your PC up as an access point.

Failing that, you could just go peer-2-peer (AdHock)

But then, I'm not totaly sure what you are asking.

[Aragorn]

Originally Posted by John Doe

Sorry, what i meant is that if you want one of their 108mbps wireless access points it (almost) has to be the router because they dont do a 108mbps access point as a stand alone bit of hardware

If I understand correctly, you want 108Mbps wireless in an office environment. I can see two problems with this -

1. IIRC 802.11g works at the speed of the slowest broadcaster in range. In the home you can usually guarantee that you control all the wireless cards and can make sure they are all Netgear 108Mbps cards. In an office, it only needs one person with a built-in 802.11b adapter on their laptop/PDA and everyone drops back to 11Mbps - could even be the 'war-chalker' outside!

2. In a home with one/two wireless cards you can get decent shared bandwidth. In an office with, say, 10 wireless users you supposed 108Mbps bandwidth is shared down to 10Mbps anyway. (not even sure that 54G will use 'turbo' mode in a large network, but I could be wrong here).

A couple of other points - unless you have a T1 WAN connection to share browsing isn't going to be any faster with 108Mbps wireless than 11Mbps (will be faster for file sharing and client/server apps) - and having worked in a well populated 802.11b office environment there is little noticeable difference to the user than using a 100Mbps switched LAN.

In summary, I don't think it would be good marketing to aim 108Mbps wireless at the business segment.

HTH.

[LooeyUK]

Originally Posted by John Doe

Sorry, what i meant is that if you want one of their 108mbps wireless access points it (almost) has to be the router because they dont do a 108mbps access point as a stand alone bit of hardware

Am afraid they do

Originally Posted by LooeyB

Am afraid they do

Rason for the almost in brackets was bacause:

Originally Posted by John Doe

(snip)You can get one aimed at the business market but its £150. (snip)

They dont promote a 108mbps access point (not a router) targeted at the 'Home' environment. I dont see one here.

I know they do do a sole 108mbps access point by definition. Its the business product i mentioned earlier for ~£150.

I accept what Aragorn has said, I do not wish to use this in a business environment i want to use it in a home environment bacause all of the wireless adapters in the house support 108mbps. Therefore, I dont need the stability durability and security of a
business product. Business users have greater technology demands therefore the products are more expensive and not value for money to the home user.

I can control the network adapters accessing the network thus maintaining 'Turbo' mode.

Originally Posted by Aragorn

1. IIRC 802.11g works at the speed of the slowest broadcaster in range. In the home you can usually guarantee that you control all the wireless cards and can make sure they are all Netgear 108Mbps cards. In an office, it only needs one person with a built-in 802.11b adapter on their laptop/PDA and everyone drops back to 11Mbps - could even be the 'war-chalker' outside!

The demand for wireless suggests that the people who use it are not at a fixed location, its unlikely that everyone in the office will have 108mbps adapters. My point is that an office AP supporting 108 is less likely to spend time in 'Turbo' than a AP in the home where all clients use 108 compatible NICs.

I dont want to drag this out any further but back to my orignal question...

(Thread Title and topic)
Netgear 108 Mbps Wireless

(Question)
Does anyone know why they (Netgear) are only producing routers supporting 108 Mbps for the home market?

Is it bacause home users only use wireless LAN to access the internet via a router and dont need the bandwith?
^ If so why do they produce 180mbps routers?
Is it because home users build ad-hoc 802.11g Turbo and somehow dont need a access point?
Is it because the sale price or cost of manufacture of a 108mbps access point whould equate to the same as the current business product and therefore there is no need to manufacture an equilivent home product?
Is it because home users use 1 machine in the house as an 108mbps AP?

I just dont understand why this product isnt available and wondered why, I have a demand for it (i have a standalone wired internet router) and want to speed up the wireless network but i would have to buy a wireless router for ~£90. I dont need another router, i just want the wireless.

Really sorry for moaning on and on but im confused :S

(Oh, and if they do and im somehow mistaken can you give me the link to the product please LooeyB, Thanks )

Sorry if this is a stoopid question betraying my ignorance, but if you are not using as a router, why do you need an access point? Can you not just run in 'ad-hoc' mode, as you suggest yourself?

Presumably the reason they do 108 Mbps routers is that it gives you the speed for local inter-computer comms, and also the shared Internet access (at the - slow - speed of your Internet connection).

Originally Posted by JohnHorb

Sorry if this is a stoopid question betraying my ignorance, but if you are not using as a router, why do you need an access point? Can you not just run in 'ad-hoc' mode, as you suggest yourself?

Presumably the reason they do 108 Mbps routers is that it gives you the speed for local inter-computer comms, and also the shared Internet access (at the - slow - speed of your Internet connection).

I might have to go ad-hoc yet, the reason that i am avoiding it is that there are a few black spots in the house, the current 54mpbs AP is tucked away in a corner that just about reaches to most places in the house. The computers in the house move around, nor are they always on, so i would have to situate an always-on NIC somewhere central to maintain the network and a PC with a wireless NIC is a bit bigger/harder to place than an AP. So its not ideal.

[Aragorn]

Sorry I missed the direction of your thread

Maybe it is pure economics - there appears to be very little difference between the price of access points and routers - eg. on Novatech they have

Linksys WRT54G Router (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?LIN-WRT54G) for £51.32
Linksys WAP54G Access Point (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?LIN-WAP54G) for £48.03

So you can save £3 by not having the router and firewall!

It probably does not make economic sense for Netgear to run a separate product line which sells for nearly the same as the router. (BTW, I'm not a sales or production manager!!!)

Thats my opinion anyway!

As to your own situation I guess you could either -
1. go ad-hoc (with associated problems)
2. get the router and put it on your internal network - not ideal but the WAN port would get an IP from your existing DHCP server and then serve it's own DHCP range to the wireless clients.

HTH