The show floor doesn't open until tomorrow, but the press releases are already starting to come in. Netgear had a flurry of them this morning, with the upshot being that the company is pushing into SMB in an ever more serious way. Part of the press material talked about changes to their channel program and the general emphasis on small businesses, but some of the products they announced look quite interesting. F The show floor doesn’t open until tomorrow, but the press releases are already starting to come in. Netgear had a flurry of them this morning, with the upshot being that the company is pushing into SMB in an ever more serious way. Part of the press material talked about changes to their channel program and the general emphasis on small businesses, but some of the products they announced look quite interesting.First comes the new ReadyNAS boxes in a variety of sizes. The one that excited me is the 6-bay unit that can provide up to 6 TB of storage on the network. SMBs have started seeing the same sort of problems enterprises have had for years, as hard disk capacity has raced ahead of backup technologies. A 6TB NAS can provide realistic across-the-network backup, as well as a rich storage resource for large database files or rich media content.Next, Netgear has announced the WNDAP330, an 802.11n dual-band access point. If you’ve been following the development of 802.11n, you know that dual-band access points are the key to getting the promised performance benefits of the new technology. I’ve been counseling people to wait until dual-band APs are available — here’s one, and I’m looking forward to giving it a try in the Test Center. Finally, the company has announced 3 new smart switches with either 24 or 48 ports, and a variety of different features including static routing and QoS. The interesting thing to me is that all the new switches are Gig switches. Some of the analyst firms (OK, Gartner…) have been telling everyone who will listen that you don’t need to have a Gig link going to a standard office desktop computer — 100 Mbps is more than fast enough. As a result, a number of vendors have told me that they’ve seen sales of Gig ports fall while sales of 10/100 ports have been trending up. The prices for the components have been changing, though, so I think you’re going to start seeing more and more companies selling Gig ports as the only option on their switches. Netgear is showing Gig strength here, and I think it’s a good thing for small businesses. Bandwidth is one of those things, like CPU speed and RAM, where you really should buy everything you can afford and maybe just a little more. Go for the Gig — I’m convinced you’ll end up happier that way.There’s more to come — I’m talking to folks and getting press releases, and the real action doesn’t start until tomorrow. Technology Industry