2. SOHO / SMB Happenings

The show marks the official U.S. roll-out of ASUS' Networking product line. This big dog in the mobo and computer market wants to extend its reach into the networking side of things. I've reviewed their WL-300g AP, WL-100g Cardbus card, WL330 "Pocket" AP and most recently their SL1000 Internet Security Router and found strong hardware, but not-too-strong software. I'll be spending some time with them while at the show and plan to see if they're just testing the networking market waters or plan to be around for the long haul.

The pre-show releases from Belkin indicated they would be featuring their new F5D7050 USB 11g adapter,OmniView ENTERPRISE Quad-Bus Series KVM Switches and low-cost gigabit Ethernet switch line. All were being displayed at their booth this morning, along with their just-announced High-Speed Mode 11g networking line. Belkin is also changing their product packaging (the boxes, not the product enclosures) to be more informative and present a more updated image and I have to say that I like the new look.

NETGEAR is taking an enterprise focus with its booth, which will feature Layer 2 and Layer 3 Gigabit and Fast Ethernet switches, and WG302 11g Access Point, which recently received its Super-G 108Mbps powers via firmware upgrade. NETGEAR will also be hosting its first "VAR Council" at the show for its channel sales and VAR partners. And speaking of partners, it looks like the company has signed up a few more, including Perfigo, Firetide and ShoreTel.

The WG302 is the focus of two of the co-marketing agreements which has Perfigo's SecureSmart software enabling wireless management and security and Firetide's Hotpoint wireless mesh routers providing wireless mesh backhaul for networks of WG302's. The Shoretel announcement is really more that - an announcement that the companies have "certified as interoperable NETGEAR's FSM7326P Layer 3 24+2 Managed 10/100 Switch with Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) and the ShoreTel5 IP telephone system".

I stopped briefly to chat with the folks at MultiTech, who showed me their MA100-1M palm-sized RAS. It won't win any points for sexy styling, but will be handy for both RAS and networked modem applications. They also had me check out their Fax Finder V.34 fax server which can receive incoming faxes via one Direct Inward Dial (DID) port, convert them to TIFF files and email them to the appropriate users. There's also one loop-start inbound/outbound fax port for fax sending.