Broadcom executives at MWC confirmed nowadays that the chipmaker is “beyond the sampling phase and even in a preproduction phase,” according to Michael Hurlston, the company’s senior vice president for wireless LAN, for its two-stream and three-stream 11ac chips. 11ac like 11n uses multiple data streams paired with multiple sending and receiving antennas to accomplish lofty data throughput.

Hurlston said he expects all-embracing OEM products, nearly absolutely access points, routers and the like, to be on sale from Broadcom’s customers by mid-2012. Although the chipmaker hasn’t announced method wins, Hurlston pointed out that the 11ac roadmap announced last month at CES was publicly endorsed by 14 equipment vendors and network providers.

In the booth, Broadcom was running one-, two- and three-stream 11ac radios. The single-stream radio, the type that would be integrated into a smartphone, was delivering usable throughput ranging between 300Mbps and 370Mbps (compared to the underlying PHY rate of 450Mbps), orders of magnitude greater than the 30Mbps-50Mbps, or slightly more, that single-stream 11n can deliver for phones today.

There is a widespread expectation that the additional premium that equipment makers and ultimately end users will have to pay for this improvement is comparatively low. Hurlston estimated that the premium for its 11ac products will be stray from 1.2 to 1.5 times initially. “We exceeded our expectations for that [i.e., for keeping it low],” he said. If the takeup is as fast as many expect, that will rapidly decline.

The three-stream products from Broadcom and rivals like Qualcomm and Atheros will hold throughput of just above 1 gigabit initially.

Qualcomm, with the Wi-Fi expertise and technology from its Atheros acquisition, confirmed it will kick off sampling its 11ac product family sometime in 2012 Q2, according to David Favreau, vice president of product management.

A lot of Qualcomm’s development effort has also involved creating integrated communications processors, marrying Wi-Fi with Bluetooth and other radios, and then tying the effect closely to its Snapdragon applications processor, which powers a wide stray of smartphones today.

Qualcomm’s booth here showed its single-stream 11ac radio, mounted in smartphone prototypes, running in the 220Mbps range, peaking at one point to 247Mbps, in a surrounding Wi-Fi environment, interior MWC’s cavernous Hall 8, that Favreau described as “challenging.”

Sony has demonstrated the face-recognition and tracking capabilities of the upcoming PlayStation Vita handheld, using the portable console’s front-facing camera to track head movement and have on-screen avatars respond accordingly. In the demo, filmed by Siliconera and which you can see after the cut, Sony showed a two-way video chat being held between a pair of animated avatars, the head, mouth, eye and other movements being mapped to those of the gamer.

Although head-tracking has been done before, the system Sony demonstrated was able to track minor details like eye-blinking and eyebrow twitches, for a more lifelike animation. Sony wasn’t saying a video calling app would necessarily be the final use of the technology, 4gamer reports, but that the software was merely a demonstration of the power of the Vita’s abilities and its potential in augmented reality (AR) gaming.

Rather than using specific glyphs that can be identified and tracked by an AR system, Sony’s Yoshikatsu Kanemaru suggested that objects and even people could be distinguished by the Vita and have computer-generated graphics overlaid. It’s a technology that appears to have borrowed from Sony’s previous SmartAR research, which can intelligently spot unique elements -such as posters, magazines or more complex forms, like body outlines – in the camera’s frame and then track them accordingly.

All of the boards in the series use the dual intelligent Processors 2 tech with DIGI+ VRM power delivery for precision power adjustment and control. The boards also provide extra DRAM power to increase stability and has a feature packed BIOS. It sounds like the family will be overclocker friendly.

The mainboards also supports SATA 6Gb/s storage interface with RAID 0/1/10 support. The chipset in the boards also supports USB 3.0 natively with no need for a secondary controller. Intel still lacks native support for USB 3.0 and all Intel chipset boards are using a secondary controller for USB 3.0 ports. There is no word on when these boards will land and how much they will cost.

The recent refresh of the GeForce GTX 460M into the 560M was a welcome one, bringing Optimus support and higher clocks to what's liable to be their crown prince of budget mobile gaming. The GTX 560M is beginning to materialize in the market, but we were still left with an odd hole in NVIDIA's lineup at the top. That hole has now been filled, and thankfully it's at least a little more than the usual speedbump that goes along with a new moniker these days. Now every part in the 500M series can switch over to Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics while running on the battery, offering the best of both worlds.

NVIDIA's new top dog is the GeForce GTX 580M. Every spec on the press sheets is listed as "up to," but that's really par for the course. While NVIDIA's reps declined to comment on what chips are being used for the GTX 580M, you'll find the specs are a dead giveaway. The 580M seems to be a mobile version of the GF104/114 (more likely GF114), with 384 CUDA cores, with a main clock of 620MHz (yielding 1240MHz on the shader cores). Riding shotgun is a 256-bit memory bus supporting up to 2GB of GDDR5 clocked at an effective 3GHz. Those of you keeping score at home will note that's an improvement of 45MHz on the core (and thus 90MHz on the shaders), with the memory speed remaining constant. All told I'd expect performance in the neighborhood of the desktop GeForce GTX 460 1GB version (or at least, the original NVIDIA spec): not too shabby, but still an incremental improvement on the shipping GTX 485M. The major selling point is, again, Optimus support in the 580M.

On the heels of the GTX 580M is the GeForce GTX 570M. The 470M was a bit of an oddity in that while the 480M and 485M were easy enough to find, the 470M was largely a rarity. While the 580M sees the minor speedbump we've come to expect, the 570M is a major improvement over its seldom-used predecessor. The 570M likely uses the same silicon as the 580M (which is, again, more than likely a GF114), but while the 470M only had 288 CUDA cores, the 570M gets a healthy upgrade to 336. The 470M's 535MHz core clock also sees a boost to 575MHz, with the shaders clocked at 1150MHz. The 570M still retains the 470M's 192-bit memory bus, and will be configured with either 1.5GB or 3GB of GDDR5 clocked at an effective 3GHz, a marked improvement on the 470M's 2.5GHz memory clocks. All told performance should be somewhere between the desktop GeForce GTX 460 768MB and the GTX 460 SE. For mobile gaming, that's still not bad at all, and again it benefits from Optimus support.

NVIDIA also was able to point out specific models of notebooks that will be shipping with these parts. Availability in 17" Clevo notebooks should surprise no one, with the P270WN in particular supporting both 3D Vision and SLI'd GeForce GTX 580M's. Alienware's new M18x (which we have en route for review) will also be supporting the GeForce GTX 580M in SLI. And finally, the MSI GT780R shown above will be shipping with the GeForce GTX 570M.

NVIDIA expects notebooks featuring the new GPUs to be available for order from OEMs today.

Razer is back and that DeathAdder mouse is getting dressed up for fans of the Transformers franchise. The mice are for the tie in to the new flick that opens this week in theaters everywhere. The DeathAdder comes in both Autobot and Decepticon versions with the good guy mice in red for Optimus Prime and yellow for Bumblebee. The bad guys are in silver for Megatron and purple for the new baddies that pop out of the dust on the moon.

All of the mice have the same 3.5G sensor and 3500dpi sensitivity. You can pick up any of the four designs for $69.99 each. To complete your Transformers desk swag you can also get a Transformers Vespula dual sided gaming mouse pad with Optimus on one side and Megatron on the other for $44.99. Razer also has a line of laptop sleeve cases in Transformers style for $49.99 each.

Cons
USB support is limited only to storage devices. Lacks robust NAS capabilities.

Bottom Line
Netgear’s N750 is a throughput thoroughbred in the 5 GHz band. Performance at the 2.4 GHz band is slightly above average with other top 2.4 GHz routers on the market. Advanced features and easy setup makes the N750 a router to easily recommend, despite anemic NAS capabilities.

I want to state outright: I have never seen faster throughput at the 5GHz band than with Netgear’s N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR4000) ($130, street). The vendor claims the router can do 450Mbps at the 5GHz band. In the lab, due to high performance throughput testing and real-world RF interference, if the product tests out at even half the vendor’s touted rates, I consider that very good throughput. The N750 exceeded my expectations, getting a maximum throughput of 286Mbps at 5GHz. That’s an unprecedented number, and only Netgear’s N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR3700) and the Cisco Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Wireless-N Router come close to that kind of performance. While it didn’t have the same comparable killer performance at 2.4Ghz, it was within striking distance of the top performers. Add dead-simple set up to sizzling speeds, and we’ve got a new Editors’ Choice wireless router.

Like the N600(WNDR3700), Netgear’s N750 router is perfect for more advanced users and those who like to tweak their Wi-Fi networks. However, Netgear’s new Genie wizard allows for a setup process that won’t bewilder networking novices—although if you have true router-phobia, look to Cisco/Linksys’ E-series, which practically sets itself up. Because the N750 is available at retailers online from $130 to $150, the N750 is cheaper than the Cisco/Linksys E4200, which is its closest competition on the market. The N750 also has a wider feature set, and although Cisco will be offering virtual USB via a firmware update this summer, the N750 has NAS USB capabilities (although no printer sharing).

The N750 is an easy Editors’ Choice pick because of its advanced features, easy setup, and breathtaking performance in the 5GHz band. The N750′s 2.4GHz-band performance is well above average and it’s more than adequate for connecting wireless devices for web surfing, email, and other light bandwidth tasks. If you plan to do a lot of large file transfers or media streaming, the N750 may be the best router on the market for those jobs. My one criticism is that the USB drive support can be flaky. I still have yet to see a device that can handle being a router and a NAS and perform both functions excellently. The N750 is decent at handling lighter file-sharing and streaming tasks, but if you want a true NAS, buy a NAS.

Specs and Design
The N750 ships with a stand so you can position it horizontally or vertically. It has a USB 2.0 port, four Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, and a WAN port. There’s also a button to power the router off. You’d be surprised how many routers do not have a power button. If you want to do a hard reset, you have to fiddle with wires or go into the router’s management interface—and either is a hassle.

The design does not differ much from Netgear’s N600 (WNDR3700). The front LEDs include one that indicates the status of a connected UBS device and when the device is safe to remove. There’s also a WLAN on and off switch, which powers up the wireless radios, and a WPS button to automatically connect WPS-supported wireless clients. Although Netgear doesn’t typically disclose hardware specs, I can confirm that the router uses Broadcom chipset. The 5GHz radio is equipped with three stream antennas, and the 2.4GHz radio uses 2×2 antennas. This accounts for the unbelievable performance at the 5GHz band and the better than average performance at 2.4GHz —which is fine. You want the 5GHz band to scream when handling intense bandwidth tasks. The problem is you need to have wireless clients that also support the three stream technology to take advantage of that speed. The laptop I use for testing, HP’s Elitebook 8440w, does have a compatible Intel Centrino-based wireless adapter.

The N750 also has 16MB flash memory and 64MB RAM—the same memory specs as the N600 (WNDR3700).

Setup
The router ships with a Resource CD that contains the setup files and a well-detailed user manual PDF. The manual indicates that the router can be setup using the Smart Wizard on the CD or manually—an option for advanced and Linux users. This router is compatible with PCs, Macs, and Linux machines.

You can only use the Smart Wizard setup for Macs and PCs, and that’s the option I chose. Clicking Setup launches the Netgear Genie app. Setting up the N750 is not wireless setup, as it is with the Cisco/Linksys E-series routers. You have to have a physical Ethernet cable. I had the router connected to my broadband via the router’s WAN port, and I had my laptop with the setup software installed on it connected to the router with an Ethernet cable to one of the router’s LAN ports.

Setup is relatively simple: name your SSIDs for both the 2.4 and 5GHz bands, setup security (which defaults to WPA2). Enter a passphrase, and you’re done. While I’ve previously criticized Netgear for absurdly detailed, almost condescending setup instructions like “take the adapter labeled from the box and plug it in,” that’s not the case here. In fact, the instructions don’t emphasize strongly enough that users have to connect it via an Ethernet cable to their computer as part of the set up their system. But that’s one minor complaint in an otherwise excellent setup system.

Features
Typical home users will probably just be happy with the Genie setup process and leave the router as is. For them, Netgear offers a Live Parental Control Service through OpenDNS. It’s an easy way to keep the kiddes from viewing anything that could scar them from life on the Internet–I detailed how efficiently it works in my review of the N600 (WNDR3700).

The level of control the N750′s features offer will delight advanced users. The entrée to those features is the management interface, which will look familiar to anyone who has managed a Netgear router in the past, but since the release of the N600 (WNDR3700), Netgear has padded features even more. Advanced features include guest networking, content filtering, the ability to set router up in Bridge or Repeater mode, as well as extensive USB functions. For example, you can set up an approved list of USB devices to connect to the router.

I connected a 75GB Cirago USB drive to the router. The drive was correctly identified as a Cirago device within Netgear’s interface, and the free and used storage was reported correctly, as well. The router also can act as a media server. I connected a USB drive stored with several videos and was easily able to stream to wireless devices on my network. You can access an attached USB drive through Windows Explorer via a UNC path to a shared folder on the USB device. Users can also create sub-folders from within the router interface and edit permissions. Managing a USB device’s folders and files through the router takes a little know-how of folder and file management. Again, for more robust but easier file sharing and streaming, a NAS like Iomega’s Home Media Network Hard Drive, Cloud Edition, LG’s Super Multi N2A2 NAS or QNAP TS-212 TurboNAS are better options.

The N750 also supports IPv6—something you want to find in any future networking device purchases. It’s easy to enable IPv6 with just a click.

Performance
I want to highlight how great the performance of the N750 is at the 5GHz. Performance was very good at 2GHz, of course, but what really impressed me was the consistency of 5GHz throughput, which didn’t vary much when I was 5 feet or 30 feet from the router. I test using Ixia’s IxChariot Throughput and High Performance Throughput scripts. They are bidirectional tests, simulating upload and download traffic, with one endpoint wired to the router and another wirelessly connected. Here are the results:

Comparison at 2.4GHz to throughput of single-band 2.4GHz routers:

Comparison at 5GHz to throughput of dual-band routers:

You can see that throughput is on par with the top routers at the 2.4GHz band, although Cisco’s 1550 and E1200 routers have the edge. At the 5GHz band, it’s clear to see the N750 is tops, with only Cisco’s E4200 and the N600 (WNDR3700) achieving throughput in the triple-digits.

When I switched to a High Throughput testing script, I get even better results. I don’t normally report the results of high throughput testing I do on dual-band routers because I find very negligible difference from the “regular” throughput script results–no more than 5 Mbps more or less than with using the regular script. The High Throughput script simulates intense, rigorous traffic like VoIP or high-def video. The N750 is the first router that gave significantly different results using the High Throughput versus the regular throughput test (at which the N750 also did well). The N750 delivered a shocking 286 Mbps using the High Performance script at a distance of five feet. The router clocked 279 Mbps at 15 feet and 250Mbps at 30 feet on the same test. These results show that the N750 is built to handle high-throughput network traffic.

USB performance was less speedy. The performance is actually contingent on the performance of the USB device you attach to the router. Uploading a 1.5GB file to my Cirago device via the router took a bloated 4MBps. You get far better write speeds with dedicated NAS devices. However I still was able to stream a video without much latency.

Netgear and Cisco seem to be neck-in-neck with producing some of the top-performing wireless routers on the market for home consumers. But Netgear’s N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router has stupendous performance and a great set of features, making it the best router we’ve seen yet. If you are in the market for a router and need the capabilities of the 5GHz bandwidth, the N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router is your clear first choice, and our new Editors’ Choice wireless router.

Go back to the months and years before January 1, 2000, and it seemed two equally strong, equally dogmatic and dramatically opposed viewpoints were trumpeted everywhere as loyalists vied for the time, attention and dollars of IT managers.

In one camp, the entire world was going to plunge into darkness at the stroke of midnight because programmers years ago decided to save only two digits in the date field. Technology as we knew it would stop, planes would fall from the sky, and the very infrastructure of our world would fall apart. In short: Everybody panic!

In the other camp, loyalists calmly looked at the situation and said, “Nah, it’s cool.” According to them, nothing would ever come of it: Go about business as usual and don’t bother with it.

Death of ipv4The same kind of shouting match is now going on in the IPv4 vs. IPv6 debate. Essentially, the argument is over whether or not the Internet as it’s been designed using IPv4 is running out of IP addresses to assign. Clearly, if so, it’s a bad thing, as the number of network-connected devices is expected to keep expanding wildly for the foreseeable future–unless, of course, they can’t even get on the network because the fundamental underpinning of the technology, the IP address, has run its course.

The first camp argues that the Internet is already out of IP addresses, and if we don’t move everything to the new IPv6, which supports a nearly infinite number of IP addresses, the Internet-connected world will grind to a halt.

On the other hand, you’ve got a camp that argues that thanks to Network Address Translation (NAT), there’s still a tremendous number of IP addresses available, so everything will be fine, potentially forever.

That brings us to today, World IPv6 Day, where many major Internet companies will flip the switch on their network to run on IPv6 for 24 hours, just to see what happens.

Regardless of how the tests work out today, there’s still a lot of conflicting information out there for IT managers. What’s a technology professional to think when it comes to whether their Internet-reliant systems are at risk if they, their suppliers and everyone up the chain to the backbone of the Internet isn’t ready for the IPv4 address crunch?

ipv4 address scare is like Y2KJust like Y2K and most other things in life the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Are there millions of addresses left, or are we already out?

“Both statements are true, but they’re not particularly helpful,” Keith Stewart, a product manager at networking vendor Brocade recently said. “We believe that exhaustion is real, but there’s still time to plan. There’s a pragmatic view for the transition to IPv6.”

Such a pragmatic view is of benefit to Brocade, which makes a network device that acts as a gateway between IPv4 and IPv6 users. But such self-interest doesn’t mean the advice is incorrect.

Leading up to Y2K, it wasn’t the extremists screaming the end is nigh from the top of the hill who saved the day. It was the moderates, who knew there was the potential for problems and got to work testing, identifying, solving, poking, prodding and torture-testing to bring things up to date .

So, too, with the IPv6 debate: The moderates recognize that there is a challenge, and are testing to find out its parameters for the Internet in general–but especially within the needs of their businesses. They will steer successfully through the process without having to rip and replace every bit of networking gear their company has ever purchased.

ipv6Illustration: Jack GallagherIn short, don’t worry about IPv4 address exhaustion too much. There are still options out there. But you should be cognizant of the change. Particularly if you’re relying on some of the massive cloud-based services that are today testing IPv6, you should follow events closely. If you’re using the Internet for commerce, it’s a good time to know what your Internet-based suppliers and partners are doing around IPv6, to make sure as some organizations move more fully to IPv4, you’re not going to be inaccessible for them.

“The reality is a two-protocol world will be around for the next decade,” Brocade’s Stewart argues.

Planes aren’t going to fall out of the sky. But it is time for you to start thinking about what IPv6 is going to mean for your business, and building your plans with future-proofing in mind.

Enjoy increased wireless coverage for video streaming, online multi-player gaming and more with the NETGEAR Universal WiFi Range Extender (WN3000RP) helping to connect devices including tablets, smartphones and Internet TVs

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — NETGEAR®, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTGR), a global networking company that delivers innovative products to consumers, businesses and service providers, announces the easy and affordable solution for eliminating wireless dead spots at home: the new NETGEAR Universal WiFi Range Extender (WN3000RP), now available from major retailers worldwide.

A rapidly expanding constellation of Internet-enabled mobile and entertainment devices including tablets, smartphones, Blu-ray players, game consoles, laptops and televisions are connecting to WiFi networks from around the house and even outside on decks and patios. A big driver for this trend is the increasing availability of movies, TV shows and other video through online streaming. Consumers want to watch streaming video on their laptops, tablets and Internet-capable televisions, creating greater demand for strong WiFi connections.

This makes WiFi dead spots more unwelcome than ever, but the answer up to now – running an Ethernet cable through walls and ceilings to add a second wireless access point – has been inconvenient and complicated.

The NETGEAR Universal WiFi Range Extender increases the coverage of home networks by automatically repeating the wireless signal from a WiFi router or gateway.

The extender is a single, compact, self-contained white cube that plugs into any AC outlet. No new wiring is required, and setup takes only a few minutes. When paired with routers that have a “Push ‘N’ Connect” (WiFi Protected Setup) button, the only configuration required is simply pressing the “Push ‘N’ Connect” button on the router and then on the extender.

Dynamic LED indicators on the extender help find the best location for WN3000RP in the home, usually about halfway between the router and the wireless dead spot.

The extender supports 802.11b/g/n and works with all common WiFi security standards including WEP, WPA and WPA2.

“Today consumers are connecting more and more wireless mobile devices and Internet-capable TVs to their networks, from more places in the home. These devices are often used for high-bandwidth activities, such as video streaming and multi-player games, that require rock-solid WiFi connections,” said Damir Skripic, Product Line Manager for Connected Entertainment at NETGEAR. “The NETGEAR Universal WiFi Range Extender makes it possible to enjoy a robust wireless connection in remote corners of the house or outdoors, in places that now have low or no WiFi signal.”

Pricing and Availability

The NETGEAR Universal WiFi Range Extender (WN3000RP) is now available worldwide from major retailers – in stores and online –with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $89.99 in the United States.