NETGEAR WPNT834 Supplementary Manual page 7

Networked Attached Storage is simply an external drive that attaches to a
Gateway or Router and is available to every computer on the network. Initially,
many consumers simply use their PC operating system's file sharing capability.
They supplement this with cheap, shareable, external USB drives.
The limitations of using a PC as a storage device are quickly apparent. The
storage PC needs to be always on and available to the network. The content on it
must be unprotected and therefore open to loss and corruption. The storage PC
also cannot be easily configured with redundant drives. These concerns drive the
consumer to purchase a NAS to efficiently back up all the media in their home.
With NETGEAR's ReadyNAS, customers can today rent or buy licensed videos
or receive free videos (from media companies, strangers and friends) by
downloading them directly to the NAS using the download agent that's embedded
in the NAS. They can share free ones with others as well. Video entertainment in
the home has never been easier to obtain.
The addition of Networked Attached Storage in the Digital Home raises the
importance of the quality and through-put of the home network. Consumers are
migrating to Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n in order to compress data backup and
media download times.
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