6. Even More Wireless

ASUS won't have the mini-AP market to themselves for long since both Sercomm and GlobalSun were showing similar products. Like the ASUS WL300g. Sercomm's IP802SM is based on a Marvell chipset. But unlike the ASUS product, it supports AP, AP client and router modes. Sercomm said they were starting mass production this month, so look for it (in a different form of course) sometime this fall.

Sercomm's IP802SM Mini 11g AP/Router

Global Sun's "Pocket AP" is also 11g and supports AP, AP client and Router modes. It's more pocket-sized than Sercomm's and appeared to be thinner, too.

My visit to GlobalSun's demo suite unearthed a number of other wireless goodies. They had a couple of versions of what they called a WiFi AV box. One version used a pair of devices (supporting both 11a and g) to wirelessly stream audio and video, while another used a single device and a wireless-equipped notebook.

I also saw a wireless "E-storage" device similar to ASUS' WL-HDD that will come in flavors to support 3.5 and 2.5 inch IDE drives. Also seen, but not explained were a VoIP phone and 802.11b "WiFi speaker" adapter (I saw one of the latter at Z-Com's stand, too).

The neatest discovery, however, was a GPRS router. Actually, a more accurate description would be a router with PCMCIA slot as its WAN interface, since the GPRS card can easily be replaced by a CDMA2000 1X, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, EDGE or UMTS card. So when decent speed mobile "broadband" service becomes more widely available, it looks like at least GlobalSun will be able to provide a way for you to share the bandwidth!

I was surprised to find the product pictured below at Z-Com's booth!

Z-Com can make tiny cards too!

I was told that it uses a Marvell chipset and that the product is being supplied to a well-known vendor who already sells a similar-sized product.

Finally, I'll quickly mention XNET's MWI241GG Mesh Wireless Router. It's still a work in progress, so hard specs weren't available. But the dual-radio router is intended to be able to create self-configuring wireless mesh networks and will be available in a/g, a/a, g/g and ag/ag radio configurations.