Netgear goes 802.11g

By Alun Williams

Posted on 18 Jun 2003 at 12:59

Netgear is upgrading its wireless product line to support the recently ratified IEEE 802.11g specification.

Free, downloadable firmware upgrades will be made available for its existing wireless products based on the 802.11g draft specification. Specifically, its wireless router (WGR614 54Mbps Cable/DSL Wireless Router) and access point (WG602 54Mbps Wireless Access Point can be updated this week).

Firmware upgrades for its firewall product (FWAG114 802.11a+g ProSafe Dual-Band Wireless VPN Firewall) and PC Cards (WG511 54Mbit/sec Wireless PC Card and WAG511 802.11a+g Dual-Band Wireless PC Card) should be available before the end of the summer.

Although the 802.11g standard supports 54Mbit/sec, this is a theoretical maximum. As with 802.11b the rates of communication will be considerably lower in practice. Nonetheless 802.11g is still some five time faster than 802.11b.

'As we expected, the changes between the final, ratified 802.11g specification and the firmware currently shipping with our 802.11g-draft product line are minimal, so a simple firmware upgrade will easily bring our current products up to full 802.11g compliance,' said Lianne Caetano, Product Line Manager at NETGEAR.

'Prior to the release of its 802.11g-draft products, Netgear did its due diligence to address, in advance, concerns of interoperability, performance and compatibility that plagued early pre-standard products,' added Caetano. 'The new upgrade will ensure interoperability with 802.11g-compliant equipment from other manufacturers.'

You can find more details on the Netgear Web site.