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Tuesday, November 8, 2011

HeadToHead: 3Com Office Connect vs. NETGEAR Wireless 54Mbps Travel Routers

| Wireless Driver & Software

Construction Details

Both products are based on the Sercomm IP802SM, which I first spotted at this year’s Computex show in Taipei. Figure 1 shows the two boards side-by-side, with labels that I added to keep track of which was which!

Can you spot the differences?

Figure 1: Can you spot the differences?
(click on the image for a larger view)

Like the ASUS Pocket APs, both use Marvell’s Libertas 802.11g Access Point / Gateway Solution, which includes an ARM9-based 88W8510 processor and CMOS 88W8010 transceiver. If you open up the larger view, you can see the slight differences between the boards.

You can also see single antenna (lower right of each board), which is in contrast to the dual diversity antennas used in both ASUS designs. Figure 2 shows a close-up of the ASUS WL-330g board and the gold-plated pads at upper-right and lower-left that connect to antennas are nestled into slots in the WL-330g’s top cover.

ASUS WL330g - Closer view of the board

Figure 2: ASUS WL-330g board

By the way, both products get quite toasty when running, with even the flash memory on the bottom of the board (not shown in the photos) burnin’ up a good amount of electrons. I’m not sure what the reliability implications are for this, but I guess time will tell!

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