Things were pretty quiet in SOHO routers, except for Linksys, who continues to expand their already broad line of routers. Two routers in particular were interesting surprises and should have the competition scrambling... Here's the list (all prices are estimated street):

Instant Wireless-Ready Cable/DSL Router (BEFSR41W) $99 / Jan 02 - This is the good ol' 4 port Linky, but with a built-in PC card slot. This will let you insert a Linksys 802.11b card when you're ready to go wireless. The advantage of this model is that it will allow Linksys to change radios by just changing PC cards, allowing user upgrades to different wireless standards. The disadvantage is that it only works with Linksys' PC card, which doesn't allow for attachment of additional antennas. The horizontally mounted card also gives you a horizontal (vs. vertical) polarization of the radio signal, which could adversely affect range.

EtherFast VPN Cable/DSL Router with 4-port Switch (BEFVP41) $180 / Jan 02 - The VP41 is a very aggressively priced 4 port router with built-in IPsec VPN endpoint that Linksys says will support up to 70 tunnels! Since the built-in endpoint handles all the VPN duties, you don't have to run a VPN client on any of your LAN machines when connecting to a remote VPN server. Two VP41s can be used to set up a location-to-location IPsec VPN without the use of other equipment, too! If this product lives up to its claims, it may put a serious hurtin' on competing routers, most of which have only VPN "pass-through" support.

EtherFast Cable/DSL Firewall Router with 10/100 4-Port Switch (BEFSR41X) $180 / Jan 02 - The story on this product is still developing. At Comdex, this product was described to me as having PC-Cillin anti-virus software built in for on-the-fly virus scanning! When I did some follow up for this story, I found that the present plan is that it won't have the scanning built in, but just check to make sure that all LAN clients have PC-Cillin software installed and running before they are allowed to access the Internet. There's a possibility that this might change, and I'll post news if/when there's a change in plan.

PowerLine EtherFast 10/100 Router (PLERT10) $180 / Jan 02 - This is the first PowerLine router to be announced. See the HomePlug section of the report for details.

I also ran into DoBox in National Semi's partner area. Just before Comdex Everex Broadband Gateway to strut its stuff...