The Belkin N Wireless Router (F5D8223-4) has been added to the Router Charts. The N Wireless is Belkin's entry-level draft 802.11n router.

DigiTimes today reported that declining market share in North America over the past year has prompted Linksys to launch plans to pursue other markets and bring North America revenue contribution to "below 50%".

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With all the component and configuration options for constructing and managing a small network, it is important to numerically evaluate network performance. Performance measurements provide facts and statistics about the amount of data on your network and identify opportunities for improvement. Without measuring performance, the only indications of functionality are simple up and down states, as well as subjective statements based on user experience.

Updated 3/30/2008 La Cie's 2big Network is the company's first real dual-drive RAID 1 NAS. Compared to its competition, the 2big's feature set is bare-bones with no media or print serving supported.

The D-Link DIR-625 has been added to the Router and Wireless Charts. The DIR-625 is one step up from D-Link's entry-level draft 802.11n DIR-615.

The 625 is also a two-antenna design (2T2R) with a four port 10/100 switch. But it has a different Ubicom processor that yields 100 Mbps wire-speed unidirectional routing throughput and 144 Mbps of total simultaneous up/downlink throughput. It also maxed out our Maximum Simultaneous Connections test at 200 connections.

I've covered some of the basic elements of Multicasting, such as IGMP and the Layer 2 switching components in my previous posts (Part 2). This article will go into the technology behind Multicasts at Layer 3 and some of the issues limiting wider use of Multicast technology.

As you recall in my first post, I observed that Yahoo's transmissions of live NHL games would seem to be good candidates for Multicast, yet were being sent as unicast. Then I covered the simple issue of enabling Multicast within a local area network. Coming full circle, here we are diving into Multicast technology to understand why it isn't more widespread.

The Linksys WRT150N V1.1 has been added to the Router and Wireless Charts. This is Linksys' least-expensive draft 802.11n router, which is being replaced by the WRT160N when current stock is exhausted.

The D-Link DIR-615 has been added to the Router Charts and will be added to the Wireless Charts shortly. This is D-Link's least-expensive draft 802.11n router.

I don't seem to have any luck getting Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) to work in any of the products I've tested that allegedly support it. And since the Wi-Fi Alliance seems to have me on its "Do Not Talk To" list, I'm turning to our readers, who tend to be a pretty knowledgeable bunch, for wisdom.

The WRT160N has been added to the Router and Wireless Charts. This will become Linksys' lowest-cost draft 802.11n router once the WRT150N inventory is exhausted.

In my last post, I discussed multicasts and some of the basic concepts. This time, I'm going to discuss technologies used by switches and routers to enable and configure multicasts. Specifically, I'm going to dive into addressing and IGMP. Understanding the details behind multicasts helps understand configuring multicasts as well as the issues limiting the use of multicasts on the web.

IOGEAR today announced a self-contained remote access appliance for PC's and KVMs.

The PCPortal connects between a display and USB keyboard and mouse and the display and USB port on a computer or KVM server. No software is required on the computer or KVM and both Windows and Linux-based OSes are supported.

This short How To shows you how to delay your old wireless router's trip to the landfill.

If you're trying to decide whether a more expensive "firewall" will keep you safer than an off-the-shelf router, this article can help.