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WLAN Equipment: SOHO and Personal Use

Many wireless products have been designed with the home office or small office in mind. Features and versatility required for enterprise and large corporate use are typically missing. Even the Wi-Fi Alliance has started distinguishing between such devices with labeling of WPA certification that differs between intended products usage. WPA-Personal depicts a product intended for SOHO usage, and WPA-Enterprise indicates products intended for usage in large corporate networks. This section describes some of the more popular products that historically have been geared for the SOHO market.

Buffalo

Founded in 2000, Buffalo Technology (USA), Inc. is a subsidiary of Buffalo, Inc. (JAPAN). The company's mandate since inception has been to support an easy-to-use computer network, and most recently, to make the Internet easier to use.

Buffalo offers a few wired products (four- and eight-port switches) appropriate for the home or small-office market. Buffalo also offers WLAN products, including APs, client devices, and wireless bridges. As with its wired products, the features and capabilities of the Buffalo WLAN products are a bit limited for use in medium-size business and enterprise networks. The WLAN products, however, support numerous features that are attractive to home and small office users.

For more information, visit http://www.buffalotech.com/wireless/index.php.

D-Link

D-Link manufactures many different products, from silicon chips for Ethernet and WLAN technology to switching, routing, and WLAN network devices. D-Link entered the market in 1998, and offered its first wireless devices in 2000 (a home 802.11b wireless system). D-Link makes very good WLAN products for the home networking environment, but for corporate and enterprise environments the WLAN line leaves out many desired features, such as dynamic security and enterprise-class features.

For more information, visit http://www.dlink.com/.

Linksys

Linksys, founded in 1988, developed and marketed networking products that were an affordable commodity, enabling anyone to share documents, files, and e-mail. Over the past 14 years, Linksys has become the market leader in sales of wireless, routers, network cards, and USB adapters to the home user through retail and e-commerce channels. In 2003, Linksys was acquired by Cisco Systems, but remains a totally separate business unit. The Linksys products and Cisco Aironet products are marketed, sold, and supported as totally different product lines. The Cisco Aironet product line is geared for the corporate and enterprise market, whereas the Linksys products are targeted toward the home user.

Linksys provides various wired and wireless devices. For the home WLAN user, it provides residential gateways, APs with embedded switches, and numerous client devices.

For more on Linksys, visit http://www.linksys.com/.

SMC Networks

As a highly recognized name for networking products over the past 30 years, SMC Networks has been best known for its standards-based connectivity products, including Ethernet NICs, hubs, and switches. With the wireless revolution, the movement into the WLAN market was a natural progression.

SMC offers a variety of WLAN products, including APs, client devices, and home gateways. The SMC product line supports features desired by home users, but lacks many of the features sought after by enterprise and corporate IT engineers.

For more information on SMC, visit http://www.smc.com/.