It was been a race on one-horse in the wireless category of the Product of the Year by Datamation, with the Wireless-G Broadband Gateway/Router by Linksys gaining 69 percent of the total votes.
The remaining products that entered the final stage almost split the remaining of the votes evenly. The second place was grabbed by the EliteConnect 8-2.11b 2.4GHz Wireless High Power PC Card (SMC2532W-B) from the SMC Networks with the percentage of the votes being 12, the third place being occupied by the Backpack workgroup wireless server from the Micro Solutions with 10 percent, the next place being occupied by the ClearOne communications’ Max Conference Wireless Phone with 9 percent.
The key to the success of the Linksys router has been the competitive versatility, performance and pricing. For instance, the WRT54G, had became the first networking wireless router to make use of the 802.11g standard at high speed. It even supports 802.11g and 802.11b, so that you could keep your present 802.11b gear and substantially shift to the wireless-G.
The 802.11g provides a wireless transmission over a relatively very short distances up to a speed of 54 Mbps (megabits per second) when compared to the 11 Mbps (megabits per second) of the Wi-Fi standard 802.11b. Similar to 802.11b, the 802.11g can operate in the range of 2.4 GHz so that they are made compatible.
To accommodate the easy integration of 802.11g into the networks of small-business and home, the Broadband Wireless-G Router from Linksys is actually three devices in a single box. At first, there is a Wireless Access Point, which allows you to connect to the Wireless-B or Wireless-G devices.
There’s a full-duplex 4-port 10/100 switch that gets connected to the devices of wired-Ethernet. Connect the four PCs either directly, or in daisy-chain to more switches and hubs to create as huge network as you require. Finally, a router function ties all those together and allows you to share the high-speed DSL or cable connection for Internet, resources, and other files such as storage space of hard disk, printers.
Furthermore, the router can act as the DHCP server which has a built-in protection against the intruders fro the Internet, supports the pass-through VPN, and could be set to filter the internal access of the users to the Internet. The feedback of the users to the WRT54G Gateway/Router of Linksys typically is positive, with the customers referring its ease of flexibility and use. There were few issues that are reported, however, majority of these look to have been removed in the latest update of the firmware. This helps to fix several bugs that include a security vulnerability that made the Web server of the router to crash.
The Backpack of Micro Solution is a total-in-one solution for workgroup wireless server – network, router and firewall server with the built-in 802.11b/11Mbps wireless access point, letting up to 253 users simultaneously remote the access to data through a FTP client or Web browser.
The ClearOne’s conference wireless phone is in the other wireless sector’s corners wireless conference phone.