With your children streaming their school lessons online, tuning into PE via Youtube early in the morning and otherwise putting your home network through its paces, you may be coming to realise that the network hardware that has suited fine for lazy Sundays and quiet evenings is not quite quarantine-ready. When working from home under difficult circumstances, you need to know that you can rely on your home network in those vital moments right before a deadline; that your marketing pitch will be met with wide eyes and open ears, rather than frustrated faces, as your video feed lags and staggers behind your speech. That’s where Netgear comes in.
Netgear is renowned worldwide for its strong product line suitable for consumers, businesses and service providers alike, and its products could be just what your home network needs to make remote working easy. NetXL is excited to announce that it is now stocking a broad range of Netgear products, including many powerful and popular network switches, wireless access points and routers. Today, we’ll be getting more familiar with a few Netgear products and discussing just how they can improve your remote working network setup.
Netgear LB2120-100UKS LTE Modem
Typically marketed for industry applications where a stable internet connection is necessary without access to wired ethernet (think large scale construction sites, harbours and transportation), the LB2120-100UKS is an LTE modem, meaning it uses mobile data to connect to the internet. Designed with industry in mind, you know you can rely on this unit to deliver when you need it most. This reliability and functionality pairing make the LB2120 the perfect candidate for a connectivity backup solution. If your wired internet connection goes down, your network can switch over to the LB2120 and establish a connection using mobile data.
Whether you’re working on time-sensitive projects, protecting client investment, or running your own business as you work from home, a connectivity failover measure is essential for protecting your work and the Netgear LB2120 offers an affordable, highly capable solution. Providing up to 150Mbps download and 50Mbps upload speeds over LTE, with dual gigabit ethernet ports for lossless passthrough, the LB2120 fits flexibly into any network configuration.
Netgear GS308P-100UKS Network Switch
With everyone stuck at home, there are more devices than ever demanding internet connectivity. The games consoles to keep the kids quiet, multiple laptops and smartphones, smart speakers and even smart toasters. With so many smart devices competing for bandwidth over the same wireless network, one way to self-declare ownership of some of that precious bandwidth is to use a network switch. Wired ethernet connections are almost always faster and more reliable than their wireless counterparts and, for a home office that’s stable, secure and capable, wiring your devices directly into your network can help to shift bandwidth priority in favour of your crucial productivity.
A unit like the Netgear GS308P-100UKS is perfect. Eight ports should be plenty for wiring in all of your office devices, permanently gifting them the connection strength and stability they need to help you get the job done. What’s more, with four of its eight ports supplying PoE to your devices, you can keep your office space cable-tidy even more easily, leaving both desk and mind clear of clutter and free to focus on hitting those deadlines.
Netgear BR500-100UKS VPN Router
The wonderfully aesthetic Netgear BR500 VPN router is perfect for those running a small business from home, or for those interested in securely accessing sensitive documents on their office network from home for remote working. Designed to be “the easiest way to protect your business”, this unit offers the network security of a built-in, business-grade firewall with the security and convenience of a VPN tunnel from your home to your office network, all whilst needing minimal configuration (VPN set up takes place via the Netgear Insight app or Cloud Portal in just a single step). For those who want the peace of mind of knowing that their business and intellectual property are safe, but don’t want to have to take a networking course to learn how to do it, this is the unit for you.
Netgear WAC505 Wireless Access Point
For large homes with many devices all vying for connectivity and competing for bandwidth simultaneously, you need wireless access points you can trust. The Netgear WAC505 is a business-grade, managed AP with an aggregate throughput of 1.2Gbps. Since it’s business-grade, it will be able to handle high client density whilst delivering speeds you know you can count on, so should provide plenty of overhead for your network whilst you’re working from home. Managed via Netgear Insight (subscription licenses also available from NetXL), which is accessed either through the Netgear Insight app or Cloud Portal and provides management and monitoring for your compatible Netgear devices, this access point makes for an excellent companion device to the BR500 VPN router above. Since the Netgear Insight system enables management and monitoring of your devices via the cloud, once you do return to work, you can continue to monitor the security of your network wherever you are.
To learn more about the different types of products featured in this article and for additional reasons as to why you should upgrade from a ‘network configuration’ of a single ISP hub, read our articles on what makes for the perfect remote working network setup.
