3Com Unleashes 802.11g Wireless Products

The company also unveiled a new modular enterprise switch line sourced from Huawei, the Chinese networking vendor involved in a patent-infringement lawsuit with Cisco Systems (see story).

3Com's first 802.11g offerings are in its OfficeConnect line, which is targeted at the small-business space, said Alan Miano, product manager at 3Com. New 802.11g offerings for 3Com's business wireless line are coming soon, he said.

At CeBit America here, 3Com debuted an OfficeConnect 802.11g access point, a gateway and a PC card. The products all support 256-bit WPA encryption, Miano said.

Mark DeFabis, president of Indianapolis-based solution provider Paradym Technologies, said the 3Com wireless products are feature-rich and "extremely" price competitive.

"With some of our smaller clients, the OfficeConnect line is the absolute right choice," DeFabis said. "The very low-end products out there are good for home users but don't suit the needs of a small-business owner. And a lot of the business-focused wireless products out there aren't cost-effective for a small business."

The 3Com OfficeConnect Wireless 11g Access Point, which can be configured as a client bridge or an access point, is slated to be available in July at a list price of $135.

The 3Com OfficeConnect Wireless 11g Gateway adds wired security features--including firewall, hacker pattern detection, VPN pass-through, NAT and URL filtering--to the wireless functionality. The gateway is scheduled for July availability at $125.

3Com's OfficeConnect Wireless 11g PC Card is expected to ship this month at a price of $79.