Netgear RangeMax 240 Wireless Router and Adapter

The latest router from Netgear uses MIMO technology to give you up to 240 Mbps throughput and much wider wireless coverage

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Twitter

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.

Price and Warranty: WPNT834 Router: Rs 11,500 (2yrs); WPNT511 Adapter: Rs 8,900 (1 yr)

Meant For: IT managers

Key Specs: 802.11b/g specification, 240Mbps, MIMO technology based

Pros: Wide area coverage, Fast wireless speed

Cons: None

Contact: Netgear Technologies, DelhiTel: 9811795900Email id: pinaki.chatterjee@netgear.com

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.

Performance
We plugged the wireless router to our isolated 100 Mbps test network. To verify the actual throughput between the router and adapter, we used NetIQ. We connected two nodes to the router-one was a notebook connected wirelessly using a RangeMax 240 adapter and second being a workstation connected to a LAN port using a cable. The NetIQ benchmark gave us a maximum throughput of 90 Mbps, which is very impressive. It could have been even higher, since the router actually supports upto 240 Mbps had we had another machine with a Netgear RangeMax 240 adapter. Here, the limitation was that of the 100 Mbps LAN. These performance results have surpassed the highest throughput we've achieved with any wireless product we've reviewed till date. For instance, the Buffalo Air Station G (reviewed in PCQuest Feb 2006) had achieved up to 35 Mbps. We also did a throughput test using a regular 54 Mbps card, and got a throughput of up to 24.86 Mbps. With such brilliant data transfer rates you don't have to hook onto the wired network for accessing media rich Internet content. You can stay wireless and still collaborate with
others on the network.

Bottom Line: These Netgear products show their prowess when used in combination. It looks as if the age of high-speed wireless LANs has finally arrived.

Anubhav Verma

Page(s)   1