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A brief encounter with a cellular network extender showed that some router firewalls are too aggressive for their own good.

Buffalo is using this year's CES to announce a revamped strategy for its NAS products and to re-enter the wireless LAN market in the U.S.

NETGEAR introduced two new draft 11n dual-band routers, a 3G router, two networked media players and a diskless version of its popular ReadyNAS Pro six-bay NAS. The company also announced new service-provider-only products and a new HomePlug AV powerline to Ethernet bridge.

Cisco chose CES to announce its Wireless Home Audio (WHA) line and three new dual-drive NASes.

A recent New York Times article portrayed Michael Dell as testy and defensive about his company's loss of market share to rival HP. “It’s O.K. if everyone doesn’t understand what we’re doing,” he was quoted as saying.

Well, I may not be the smartest guy in the world. But if my recent experience with Dell is any indication, at least some of its troubles aren't hard to figure out.

If you read the full text of today's Cisco Network Magic 5.0 announcement, it was easy to miss the reference to the Cisco Consumer Business Group. When I asked my Linksys CBG contact about it, he confirmed that, with the NM 5.0 announcement, Linksys as a Cisco corporate entity is gone and replaced by CBG. But the Linksys name will continue on, at least for awhile.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty down these days about the state of things in SOHO / SMB Networking land. I mean, when was the last time that you were excited about a networking product? For me, it's been a long while.