Firmly nestled in the “why haven’t we seen one of these already” camp at CES is the Netgear Universal WiFi Range Extender, which will boost your home wifi network regardless of what type of router you use at home.
The Extender is designed to plug directly into a power socket about halfway between your wireless router and any deadspots in your home, broadening the reach of your network. It also acts as a wireless bridge, allowing you to connect a device via ethernet to your network.
It’ll launch later this year, for an as yet undisclosed price.
[Netgear]
Cam Dove
Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 12:50 PMI don’t mean to ruin the fun, but these have been around for a few years already. I’ve personally had one in my upstairs living area. It’s branded Netcomm and plugs directly into my power socket and wireless router, and the other end is plugged into the power socket upstairs. It works quite well as I plug my xbox into the ethernet port of the upstairs one :) so yeah.. no need to wait for this one.
Striff
Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 1:45 PMThat sounds like you’re talking about Ethernet Over Power adapters, which is different to this.
Only one device, not directly attached to the router and just extends the range of wireless recption.
Andrew
Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 2:17 PMWhat I really like about this is the ability to plug devices into it using the ethernet cable- in my rented home- the router is upstairs- but my ethernet capable tv is downstairs and hence I can’t wire it up neatly… this will be awesome- i only wished it had to ethernet ports to connect the tv and blueray at the same time….
Nick Broughall
Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 5:17 PMSlightly different – this is a purely wireless extender. Netgear also announced 500Mbps Powerline products that I haven’t written up yet..
David
Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 3:31 PMSo it’s basically an Airport Express without the 3.5mm jack?
Musky
Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 3:33 PM@Andrew – Sounds like you’re looking for this
http://www.netcomm.com.au/netcomm-products/av/np203