THE BEST Networking

The 1080p HD WD TV Live Plus retains the series’ compact design while adding support for Netflix and Windows 7’s Play-to function as well as DVD navigation. If only it had Wi-Fi on board.

Belkin keeps things simple with their latest line of four Wireless Routers; the basic Surf features 802.11n, while the Play Max features 5 GHz dual-band 802.11n and a UPnP server.

Networking through your home’s electrical wiring isn’t new, but brite-View’s LinkE ups the ante (and the power) with a 200 Mbps adapter that offers a whopping 4 ethernet ports.

Berkeley student Roland Saekow’s BearExtender n3 is a 700 mW Wi-fi radio that increases the range of any Apple laptop or desktop’s signal by 2x-4x by replacing its Airport card.

If your eyes don’t glaze over at the mention of T1 lines or Cisco routers, the Universal Network Cable is for you: a rotatable collar lets you choose between five patch cable standards.

The AirStash is the swiss army knife of flash drives: it’s not only wireless, pocketable SD card storage for your iPhone/iTouch, but also streams movies and music and shares files.

Those of you lucky enough to live in a 4G area, Overdrive arrives 1/10/2010: the MiFi-like router connects to Sprint’s WiMAX and 3G networks and share up to five devices over WiFi.

Marvell’s always-on, always-connected microserver Plug Computer 3.0 gets a big spec bump: it now includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a built-in hard drive, and a 2 GHz Armada CPU.

Pogoplug 2G may as well be 4G with its new features: up to 4 external drives via USB, media sync, shared address book, video playback, and global search across drives and Pogoplugs.

The successor to the popular WD TV Live, the WD TV Live HD Media Player adds web streaming from your network (YouTube, Flickr and Pandora) as well as support for 1080p video.

Using Pogoplug-licensed tech, Seagate’s FreeAgent DockStar lets you access up to four external hard drives from anywhere in the world with Windows Mac, Linux and even iPhones.

Belkin’s Home Base is aptly named: it’s a wireless network point with 4 USB ports that’ll let you share a printer and/or external hard drive with automatic backup of connected computers.

Powerline tech has been around for awhile, but Belkin’s Gigabit Powerline HD breaks the 200 Mbps barrier by five-fold with a blistering 1,000 Mbps through your home’s electrical wiring.

The Eye-Fi Pro joins the company’s stable of versatile Wi-fi SD cards, this time packing RAW file and ad hoc support; the latter lets you upload files to your computer without a network or hotspot.