6. Broadcom

My visit to Broadcom's private suite included a quick demo of their SecureEZ Setup wizard. Having reviewed Buffalo Technology's more comprehensive AOSS feature, I knew the pitch and basically what to expect. But I was surprised that SecureEZSetup finished its setup in under ten seconds after I finished answering the two security questions, since the entire AOSS process takes about two minutes.

When compared to Buffalo's AOSS, SecureEZSetup has the disadvantages of requiring an application to be run (AOSS can be launched with a button push) and only handling devices using WPA wireless security (AOSS can work with WEP and WPA). But Jeff Abramowitz, senior director of WLAN marketing for Broadcom told me these were just first generation issues and would be addressed in future releases.

As for the potential for competing with one of their largest customers, Abramowitz told me that wasn't Broadcom's intent. He also said that that SecureEZSetup was not a response to AOSS and that the development of both technologies were "longstanding programs" in each company. He even went so far as to say that he wouldn't be surprised to see Buffalo Tech support both methods for wireless security autoconfiguration.

Abramowitz declined to say which of his customers would be the first to deploy SecureEZSetup "within a few weeks", but I got the sense that the company's name would not begin with "L".

Broadcom wasn't demonstrating their recently announced power amplifier module, but instead showed me mini-PCI boards laid out with and without the module. The new module definitely cleans up the design and, according to Broadcom's testing, improves range by at least 40%. By the way, the miniature hybrid module isn't actually manufactured by Broadcom, and will eventually be sourced by multiple manufacturers.