NETGEAR today announced the launch of the ProSafe 802.11n Dual Band Wireless Access Point (WND AP330), a dual-band wireless solution for small and medium businesses.

NETGEAR says its ProSafe 802.11n Dual Band device delivers up to 10 times the coverage and 15 times the speed of 802.11g-based networks, supporting devices based upon the 5GHz 802.11a and 802.11n (draft 2.0 specification), or 2.4GHz 802.11b/g and 802.11n (draft 2.0 specification) technologies.

The SNMP-manageable WNDAP330 incorporates 802.3af Power-over-Ethernet (PoE), and supports point-to-point and point-to-multipoint bridging with Wireless Distribution System (WDS). It supports WPA, WPA2, rogue AP detection, and 802.1x with RADIUS support.

“The promised benefits of Wireless-N networks are not being realized in many companies due to the existence of 11b and 11g clients in the network, says Peter Newton, NETGEAR Director of Product Marketing for SMB Security and Wireless Products. “To achieve full Wireless-N performance, companies are moving APs and clients to the uncongested 5GHz band where there are fewer legacy devices.”

A business customer could designate the 2.4GHz radio to support existing 11g wireless laptops, and the 5GHz radio for new 11n clients. The ProSafe 802.11n device is said to be one of the first in its class to offer 5GHz 802.11n support. It has three detachable antennas (two 5dBi and one 3dBi).

The NETGEAR WNDAP330 incorporates a 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port with Auto Uplink, a console port for local configuration and monitoring. It can be managed and configured using the ProSafe Control Center Web browser-based interface or via SNMP MIB I, MIB II and 802.11 MIB using network management software, such as NETGEAR’s ProSafe Network Management System (NMS100) and supports all popular 802.1x port-based authentication protocols.

The NETGEAR ProSafe 802.11n Dual Band Wireless Access Point (WNDAP330) is immediately available with a list price of $475.

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Sam Churchill and Don Park run the DailyWireless.org website which summarizes the news from Community Lan and other industry related sectors with detailed updates from around the world. It is full of sausy talk, viscious rumors and tantilizing tidbits.

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