TRENDnet is a popular player in the networking space. We had covered the launch of their 802.11ac lineup at the 2013 CES. We dropped by their suite again this year to look at the new products. There was the usual upgrade with the introduction of the TEW-818DRU, a beamforming-capable AC1900 router (with a 1.3 Gbps 3x3 802.11ac solution along with the standard N600 simultaneous 802.11n dual band solution). Retail availability is expected next month, and the product carries a MSRP of $260. I suspect that the street price will be competitive with the other AC1900 routers in the market (i.e, closer to $200).

The announcement which caught my eye, however, was the TPL-E420E2K, a 1 Gbps powerline adapter kit. This seems to be one of the first products to be announced based on the MIMO-capable QCA7500 from Qualcomm Atheros. Since the public announcement of the chip was only in October 2013, it is not surprising that the TPL-E420E2K is expected to ship only in June 2014. The MSRP will be $170. Considering that TRENDnet was confident enough to announce as well as display the product (in its non-final form) at CES, it is likely that the product bringup is going smoothly on schedule.

Other announcements include IP cameras (a couple of the models come with 802.11ac radios), new USB wireless adapters and new powerline adapters.

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  • MadMan007 - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link

    I have a question about MIMO WiFi. It seems that many devices only have single antennas, which is usually OK for internet given that the theoretical throughput isn't much lower than max internet speeds (real throughput and LAN speed is a different story.) But does a MIMO router/switch that is serving multiple wireless devices perform better because it allows multiple connections? To put it another way, does each '1x1' antenna of a 3x3 router/switch end up serving a device (in an abstract way, I don't think it actually works that way) so that each single antenna device will see it's maximum speed?
  • Mayank_k - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link

    Hi Madman,
    MIMO does not establish 1:1 connection b/w antennas, but each antenna in transmitting end sends data to all the antennas at receiving end, that too at same frequency. This is also called smart antenna. The DSP at transmitting and receiving end is really smart to encode the decode the data and transmitting and receiving end.
    This may help understand better : http://www.ieee.li/pdf/viewgraphs/wireless_mimo.pd...
  • Zap - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link

    Thanks for that link, Mayank_k. Looks interesting. Much of it is above my understanding, but the first 17 slides (or so) are illuminating. I'll save for later perusal.

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