Netgear gets a crush on SMBs at Interop

Interop 2008 The security guards aren't letting hacks onto the show floor of Interop 2008 in Las Vegas, but Netgear is already primed for action.

Before the doors have opened, it has announced three products for digestion.

Each of Netgear's new wares is catered to the small and medium business market, or "sumb" as I like to say out loud to the rolling eyes of many. We've got 802.11n wireless access points, static switches, and a new "Pro" line of ReadyNAS storage.

Behold:

Dual-band 802.11n WAP

First up is the launch of a SMB-friendly dual-band 802.11n wireless access point.

Listed at $475, the Netgear ProSafe 802.11n Dual Band Wireless Access Point (WNDAP330) operates on 5GHz and 2.4GHz — draft 2.0 — and supports existing 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11a devices.

The access point sports a 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port, a console port for local configuration and monitoring, and three detachable antennae (two 5dBi and one 2dBi).

It also supports Power-over-Ethernet for some, "look ma, no plug," fun. Security features include WPA, WPA2, rogue AP detection, and 802.1x with RADIUS support.

Très smart switches

Next, Netgear is rolling out three new ProSafe smart switches with 24- and 48- port Gigabit Ethernet.

Perhaps most notable is static routing capability in two of the 24- and 48-port models (GS724TR and GS748TR). Offloading inter-VLAN routing traffic from the core promises to free the tubes for WAN and security traffic. GS724TR and GS748TR models sell for $925 and $1,665 respectively.

Netgear's third new model is the 24-port Gigabit Smart Switch with Advanced Features (GS724AT), which provides Access Control Lists (ACL) for security, Layer 3-based QoS, Auto Voice VLAN, and Rapid Spanning Tree (STP) for better availability. This one goes for a list price of $575.

ReadyNAS goes Pro

Lastly, the company is punting new ReadyNAS Pro systems in sizes ranging from 1.5TB, 3TB and 6TB with gigabit networking capabilities.

Netgear claims the latter is the industry's first six-bay small form factor desktop NAS device. The systems support SATA I or SATA II hard drives, and include three USB 2.0 ports.

The boxes also use a business-oriented version of the ReadyNAS operating system, which supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and auto-expandable X-RAID2.

ReadyNAS Pro will roll out in Q3 2008, starting at $2,000. ®