Netopia R9100 Ethernet Router

With the latest broadband craze comes a host of competing products all after the same, or similar, market segments. While Linksys aimed at the average home users market with their EtherFast router, Netopia has attempted to answer a somewhat higher calling with the R9100 Ethernet Router. The R9100 is quite a serious small-medium business router, it has many features that the lower end routers do not have. For example; Secure VPN, MultiNat, V.90 & ISDN backup support, 8-Port Hub. All of these add up to a very well implemented feature set that makes the R9100 a serious contender.

With literally hundreds of companies sprouting up all over North America who's company focus involves the need for a decent Internet connection, the need for solutions like the R9100 router is becoming more and more prevalent every day. Before the broadband craze started, the typical small/medium business was looking at solutions like ISDN, or even dial-up for company Internet access, due to the prohibitive cost associated with installing a T1 into their office. Today this just does not cut it. This is why the new broadband solutions are so important to small/medium businesses. Locally you can get a 2.2Mbit down/ 640kbps up solution for under $250 us a month, which is more than sufficient for the typical small/medium business' needs.

Netopia has been around for quite a few years, and has strategic relationships with some of the biggest names in the IT market: PSINet, WorldCom, GeoCities, and Verio to name a few. Their focus is providing Internet solutions targeted at small-to-medium businesses. They are also the folks who make the popular remote desktop management software "Timbuktu".