Broadcom Introduces Integrated Wi-Fi Router Chip

Broadcom announced an integrated Wi-Fi router solution that combines high-performance 54g wireless LAN routing, Fast Ethernet switching, accelerated VPN security, and a MIPS instruction set processor into a single system-on-a-chip (SoC). Routers and gateways based on the new processor could include a variety of security features to ensure strong data protection over wired or wireless connections. The new Broadcom chip provides built-in support for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and upgradeability to support the forthcoming WPA2 and IEEE 802.11i specifications. The chip also features the on-chip VPN co- processor core of Broadcom's Sentry5 family, providing hardware-based acceleration of encryption and authentication on virtual private networks and freeing the MIPS32 processor for other tasks. http://www.broadcom.com