|
Netgear has launched the RangeMax 240 series of wireless routers and notebook adapters. As the name suggests, the router provides much wider wireless coverage and speed than traditional routers. It claims to provide up to 1000% more wireless coverage, and up to 240 Mbps connectivity. It uses Smart MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technology developed to deliver upon these specs.
MIMO technology sends multiple data streams with the help of multiple antennae over the same wireless channel. Sending multiple streams of data also ensures that you get better signal reception and wider area coverage. Typical wireless routers and adapters listen only to the strongest signal and are vulnerable to interference from other electronic devices, whereas MIMO technology enabled routers and adapters listen to multiple signals simultaneously to eliminate dead spots and signal interference.
These multiple transmitted signals are filtered at the receiver end using MIMO algorithms to output the required signal. The router uses Adaptive Channel Expansion to provide non-overlapping channels at 2.4MHz. As they belong to the same MIMO family, they provide good performance. A combination of dissimilar family adapters and routers will not provide the desired performance because of different technology architecture.
RangeMax 240 wireless router is based on 802.11b/g specification. It has five 10/100 Mbps ports out of which one is for Internet connectivity and the other four for LAN. The router supports all the key wireless security standards, which include a firewall, DoS attack prevention, intrusion detection, WEP (64 and 128-bit), and also second generation Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key (WPA2-PSK). Router management happens through a Web browser. The same console can also be used to block or schedule access to sites and services. It logs sites that were visited through any node on the network. These logs can be periodically sent to a predefined e-mail address for assessment.
|