Sunday, December 17, 2006

Conexant Cashes In On Networking Chips

Home networking has drawn a hive's worth of buzz over the past few years, and vendors are gearing up to meet the inevitable consumer demand. Count Conexant Systems among them.

Last week, the Newport Beach, Calif.-based semiconductor firm launched a line of home networking processors designed to power next-generation broadband gateways and wide area networks access applications. Although the CX8611x family supports both wireless and wired network configurations, Conexant product marketing engineer Gilad Aloni said he expects consumers to favor a wireless approach.

"We're seeing greater demand on the wireless end," Aloni said. "To that end, we engineered the CX8611x line so that it's compatible with any of the various 802.11 a, b and g chipsets out there.

Although Conexant did not divulge the names of gateway manufacturers that have signed on for the new line of chips, earlier versions of its silicon can be found in products from Linksys, Netgear, D-Link Belkin and Efficient Networks.

On the MSO side, Time Warner Cable has been one of the first ops to dip a toe into the home networking stream. Last year TWC kicked off a series of trials in five markets, including Los Angeles, Orlando, Fla., and Albany, N.Y. Customer satisfaction was reportedly "very high.

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