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Netgear

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Netgear, Inc.
Company typePublic
Nasdaq: NTGR
Industry
Founded1996
Headquarters
San Jose, California
,
United States
Key people
Patrick Lo, CEO & Chairman
ProductsHubs, Routers, DSL/Cable Gateways, Switches, Wireless Access Points, and Storage
RevenueIncreaseUS$1.18 billion (2011)
Number of employees
791 (Q4 2011)
Websitewww.netgear.com

Netgear, Inc. (stylized, trademarked, and marketed as NETGEAR) is a U.S. manufacturer of computer networking equipment and other computer hardware.

History

The company was incorporated January 8, 1996, as a subsidiary of Bay Networks, to "focus on providing networking solutions for small businesses and homes."[1] In August 1998, the company was purchased by Nortel as part of its acquisition of Bay Networks. Netgear remained a wholly owned subsidiary of Nortel until March 2000, when it began transitioning to third-party ownership. It became fully independent from Nortel as of February 2002.[2][3]

Netgear sells products through multiple sales channels worldwide, including traditional retailers, online retailers, wholesale distributors, direct market resellers ("DMRs"), value-added resellers ("VARs"), and broadband service providers. Its principal competitors include: within the consumer markets, companies such as Apple, Belkin, D-Link, Linksys, Roku, and Western Digital; and within the business markets, companies such as Allied Telesis, Barracuda, Buffalo, Data Robotics, Dell, D-Link, Fortinet, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, Cisco Systems, Linksys, QNAP Systems, Seagate Technology, SonicWALL, Synology, WatchGuard and Western Digital; and within the service provider markets, companies such as Actiontec, ARRIS, Comtrend, D-Link, Hitron, Huawei, Motorola Solutions, Pace, SAGEM, Scientific Atlanta-a Cisco company, SMC Networks, Technicolor, Ubee, Compal Broadband, ZTE and ZyXEL.[4]

In the first quarter of 2011, in order to achieve operational efficiencies, it combined its North American, Central American and South American sales forces to form the Americas territory. Previously North America was its own geographic region and the Central American and South American territories were categorized within the Asia Pacific geographic region. Following this change, it is organized into the following three geographic territories: Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific. In 2011, net revenue by geographic location is as follows: the Americas (49.7%), the EMEA (40.4%) and the Asia Pacific (9.8%).[5]

Product range

Netgear ADSL router

Netgear's range of products are primarily focused in the networking market, with networking products for home and business use, including wired and wireless technology.

ProSafe switches

8 Port Gigabit Switch GS108

Netgear markets a range of network products for the business sector, most notably their ProSafe switch range. As of May 2007, Netgear provides limited lifetime warranties across their entire range of ProSafe products for as long as the original buyer owns the product. Currently focusing on Multimedia segment.[6]

Network appliances

Dual WAN Gigabit VPN Firewall FVS336G

Netgear also markets various network appliances for the business sector, such as managed switches and wired and wireless VPN firewalls. The firewalls compete in the SoHo and SMB market with Linksys, as well as with software distributions such as pfSense, m0n0wall, SmoothWall, and Untangle. The managed switches compete with HP ProCurve Networking and 3Com.

Security appliances

2009 Netgear launched the ProSecure product range with all-in-one gateway solutions for small businesses and branch-offices(UTM series) and stream-scanning-appliances for 100-600 concurrent users. They use the Stream-Scanning technologies by CP-Secure. In combination with the managed layer 3 switches and professional NAS devices in 19", Netgear addresses value added resellers new security resellers.

Network-attached storage

Netgear sells a line of premium NAS devices to small businesses and consumers under the product name ReadyNAS. With this storage hardware line, Netgear vies with competitors like Buffalo and HP to deliver NAS solutions to target market segments. Netgear entered the storage market in May 2007 when it acquired Infrant (originator of the ReadyNAS line).[7][8] In March 2009, Netgear began to offer an integrated online backup solution called the ReadyNAS Vault.[9] In November 2009, Netgear upgraded its iSCSI SAN target to LIO.[10]

A newer addition to the NAS line is the Stora line of products. Aimed to be consumer friendly, easy to set up and configure, and complemented by a software suite for user-friendly backup and storage, Stora products bring file server functionality to the home user. DLNA-certified, Stora products will serve media to DLNA devices, such as Netgear's own EVA-2000 Digital Entertainer Live, or other DLNA-compliant products such as the Western Digital WD TV Live.

Newer models of the ReadyNAS line use an OS built around Btrfs. The ReadyDATA line use an OS built around ZFS.

Manufacturing

Netgear outsources some of its manufacturing to other electronics companies, including Askey Computer Corporation, Asus, Cameo Communications, Delta Networks, Foxconn, Senao and SerComm.[11]

Security Concerns

Various Netgear products that were manufactured by SerComm were found to contain a backdoor that allowed unauthorized remote access to the affected devices.[12] Netgear, along with other companies with products manufactured by SerComm that were affected by the aforementioned backdoor issued firmware updates for some of the affected products, but it was shortly found that the said updates merely hid the problem but did not eliminate it.

Various Netgear products are also known to suffer from security issues, such as the WPS brute-force vulnerability, due to the company not issuing security updates against known vulnerabilities.[13]

Awards

Netgear's Platinum II Enclosure (a case design used in most of Netgear's consumer products) was winner of a 2004 Good Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum,[14] created in conjunction with NewDealDesign.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Investors". Investor.netgear.com. Retrieved 2011-08-10.
  2. ^ "Nortel Networks Spin-Off NETGEAR to Focus on High-Growth Home and Small Business Internet Infrastructure Market". Nortel.com. 2000-03-13. Retrieved 2011-08-10.
  3. ^ Archived 2005-05-18 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Annual Report 2011 10-K, pg. 4-5, via www.netgear.com
  5. ^ Annual Report 2011 10-K, pg. 44, via www.netgear.com
  6. ^ "ProSafe Lifetime Warranty". Netgear.com. 2007-05-01. Retrieved 2011-08-10.
  7. ^ "NETGEAR, Inc. - NETGEAR® Completes Acquisition of Infrant". Investor.netgear.com. Retrieved 2011-08-10.
  8. ^ "Today @ PC World Netgear Acquires Infrant Technologies". Blogs.pcworld.com. 2007-05-03. Retrieved 2011-08-10.
  9. ^ Ngo, Dong (2009-03-03). "Netgear's ReadyNAS Vault taps into cloud storage | Crave - CNET". News.cnet.com. Retrieved 2011-08-10.
  10. ^ "News". RisingTide Systems. Retrieved 2011-08-10.
  11. ^ Summary of Netgear, Inc - Annual Report 2008
  12. ^ "TCP-32764 GitHub repository". GitHub. Retrieved 2014-06-02.
  13. ^ "DGND3300v2 WPS issue". Retrieved 2014-06-02.
  14. ^ "GOOD DESIGN 2004: Winners". Chi-athenaeum.org. Retrieved 2011-08-10.
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