By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
This week NETGEAR sharpened its attack on the enterprise Wi-Fi 7 market with the release of its second Wi-Fi 7 AP designed for businesses. With a price tag of US$349.99 the WBE710 is affordable but still checks all the boxes when it comes to performance-enhancing Wi-Fi 7 features, capacity, and speed. The company also added a number of advanced features to its already extensive ‘Insight’ Cloud management platform.
The race is on to secure enterprise Wi-Fi 7 infrastructure market share and NETGEAR is now making inroads on two fronts: A more affordable Wi-Fi 7 AP for enterprises (released today) and more advanced Cloud-management features for security, operability, and performance. The WBE710 delivers up to 9.4 Gbps of throughput and includes marquee Wi-Fi 7 features MLO, preamble puncturing (coming soon), 4kQAM modulation, 320 MHz channels, and more, the company says.
While NETGEAR has of course been a household name in Wi-Fi for decades it is still less known that the company also offers a complete suite of enterprise-grade products based on the same RF pedigree that brought NETGEAR to the forefront of the consumer Wi-Fi market. A main difference is that NETGEAR’s business products are managed from the NETGEAR ‘Insight’ Cloud platform and associated app, which is today more than seven years old and continues to evolve at speed.
“The single most important thing for enterprise Wi-Fi networks – beyond the right Wi-Fi hardware – is creating the right management platform with features that cover the needs of a wide range of applications for enterprises big and small. ‘Insight’ is now on its seventh release and includes pretty much any feature you need as an SMB or even an MSP,” says Iphie Chen, Director of Product Management at NETGEAR.
NETGEAR says the most important features for MSPs include multi-level management for example across multiple accounts, locations, and groups of AP performing different functions. Energy efficiency modes and PoE scheduling allows enterprises to save on energy consumption while fast roaming ensures mobility within the office. Captive portals for guest Wi-Fi services can be set up instantly. The most recent Insight release adds more features for operability and security, Iphie Chen says.
“We’ve added RF profiles that allow IT administrators to instantly configure APs – for example – for open office or outdoor deployments. For router management we’ve added OpenVPN at the device level. And of course Insight manages the entire enterprise network infrastructure including APs, switches, and routers from a single pane of glass,” she says.
Another key value-add from NETGEAR Business is free Wi-Fi design services including site surveys – yes, remarkably, this is actually free of charge and conducted by experienced Wi-Fi engineers. This also means that anyone in doubt about how to apply NETGEAR’s new Wi-Fi 7 solutions – including how to configure Wi-Fi 7 networks for the best result depending on use case, traffic demands, and so on – can rely on NETGEAR’s Pro Wi-Fi Design Services. For more also read here.
NETGEAR’s new more affordable Wi-Fi 7 AP release is exactly in line with what analysts from Dell’Oro believe to be the fastest strategic path towards broad enterprise Wi-Fi 7 adoption while markets are still constrained by cost cutting.
“On one hand, enterprises are under pressure to figure out how Generative AI can revolutionize their businesses. On the other hand, companies need highly performing networks to enable digital transformations. Vendors sensitive to these pressures are releasing cost-effective Wi-Fi 7 APs which will help accelerate the adoption of this latest generation of Wi-Fi,” said Siân Morgan, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group, in a recent press release.
/Claus.
