New Netgear routers, promise routing, will probably deliver

I’m a big fan of wireless routers – one of my dreams is to one day own 256 different wireless devices so I can see what happens if you try to connect all of them to the same wireless router, to see if it breaks anything. So far I’ve got maybe 6 or 7 devices, so I’m slowly working my way there, and I reckon I should have enough by the time that I’m 60. But anyway, because of this, I was thrilled today to learn that Netgear has announced a couple of new wireless routers.

The WNR2000 and the DGN2000 are pretty similar devices – only the latter has a built in DSL modem, which will be useful if you have an ADSL internet connection (pretty much everyone except Virgin Media customers, I guess). They both support the relatively new 802.11N standard – which is (a metric) “loads” faster that 802.11g – though there is back-compatibility with the older standard.

What sets these routers apart from the rest of the routers crowd (their dull exteriors certainly don’t) is that they both support seemingly proprietary “push ‘n’ connect” technology (which requires specific Netgear network cards), which is designed to ease connecting your computer to the router. If it works well, that’s certainly something that’ll appeal to anyone who has ever used a wireless network.

Another interesting feature is support for multiple SSIDs – in other words, you can set up essentially two seperate networks: one that is locked down using WEP encryption and the like, that’s all passworded up, and another for guest access. Price-wise they’re not bad either – with the WNR2000 at $89 and the DGN2000 at $119, which given the way the US economy is going (ooh, satire), means that they’ll be practically giving them away by British prices soon enough.

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