Home Net Hardware Cancelled

Less than two years after entering the market, Microsoft is discontinuing nearly its entire line of home-networking equipment, saying that it can do more to drive home-networking adoption by building the necessary technologies into Windows than by competing with hardware vendors.

Only Xbox Adapter Will Continue

Microsoft first entered the home-networking market in Sept. 2002, releasing wireless base stations and PC adapters based on the 802.11b wireless networking protocol, along with products for Ethernet-based wired home networks.

Because these products were very similar in functionality and price to existing offerings from vendors such as Netgear and Linksys (subsequently purchased by Cisco), the company’s decision to enter the market was somewhat puzzling. However, Microsoft suggested that competing products were too insecure and difficult to use, and that this was holding back adoption. The Microsoft products, in contrast, had Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP, a security standard) turned on by default, and an interface that made them fairly easy to set up. By spurring home networking, Microsoft hoped to sell more PCs, increase broadband adoption (which is important for other Microsoft consumer initiatives, such as the Xbox Live gaming service), and enable new consumer scenarios, such as the ability to transfer digital media from a PC to networked devices.