Linksys announced Tuesday it has re-entered the small and medium business (SMB) marketplace with the launch of seven new unmanaged switches (three with PoE) and two new VPN Routers. Linksys sold SMB infrastructure products for 20 years and has been a leading provider of switches and routers. The Linksys SMB brand was dissolved a few years ago, but now is back under Belkin International to offer a portfolio of business networking and security products that will target SMB businesses and resellers. “It's with our commitment to honor the Linksys heritage by entering back into the SMB space to target SMB businesses and resellers with solutions that are purpose-built for SMB environments,” said Mohammad Meraj Hoda, Vice President Linksys International Markets. “Our competitive advantage is our solid 20+ experience in the SMB space and we understand customers, resellers and partners want quality products with high performance while servicing them to help grow their business. Our line-up of switches and VPN routers is the first in a series of high performance business networking and security solutions to come from Linksys.” The first product suite from the Linksys Business series will include unmanaged switches, unmanaged switches with Power over Ethernet (PoE) and VPN routers. The new unmanaged managed Desktop Gigabit Switches include 5, 8, 16 and 24-port versions and 8, 16 and 24-port versions that include PoE. Features include gigabit speeds, auto-sensing ports, power saving features including auto power-down disables unused ports, smart power for short cable runs, port status switch to control LED lights, quality of service (QoS) Traffic Prioritization (on 8, 16 and 24-port only), power over Ethernet functionality (on PoE versions only) for connecting access points or video surveillance solutions. The new Linksys LRT series integrates Gigabit firewall, site to site VPN and various remote access VPN technologies into two single solutions. The LRT Series includes the Gigabit VPN Router and Dual WAN Gigabit VPN Router. These routers feature 4 gigabit ports, up to 50 ipsec tunnels, five OpenVPN tunnels, dual-WAN Load Balance and WAN failover (on LRT244 only), integrated firewall supporting URL filtering and access rules, 802.1q VLAN tagging, port Forwarding, port triggering and port address translation for 30 devices, among others. — SG
