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Winning companies: Airespace and Aruba Wireless Networks
Winning products: Airespace AS4024 and Aruba 5000 wireless LAN switches
We're still not sure what got more media coverage in 2003 - was it Ben and J. Lo or the wireless LAN switch? (Hey, what magazines are you reading?) For those who were reading People, this new wireless infrastructure product relies on a central "switch" that can regulate features and functions of access points. Several new companies launched onto the network scene in 2003 with offerings.
When we completed one of the first public, comparative tests of this new class of products, we declared a tie between Airespace's AS4024 and Aruba's 5000 switches. The Airespace switch had a great combination of performance and management features, while Aruba's gear had great security and provisioning capabilities (see review). It was too difficult for us to declare a solid winner in this space, so we're giving both products our Best of the Tests Award.
The final decision for your company should depend on whether performance and management of the product is more important than security and provisioning.
For Airespace, the product achieved maximum forwarding rates above 7M bit/sec, commonly understood to be 802.11b's theoretical top end. Airespace attributes the high rates to deliver-only point coordination function, a little-used mechanism in the 802.11 standard that allows for shorter gaps between frames than those in the more widely used distributed coordination function. "Airespace has the fastest and most tunable access points, and the simplest and most intuitive Web interface," writes Lab Alliance member David Newman.
For Aruba, the 5000 offered the most comprehensive security story, "with fine-grained controls at Layer 2 through Layer 7," Newman says. "Aruba's security offerings were the most compelling, from its own VPN client, to the stateful firewall on its switch, to its ability to allocate bandwidth on a per-user basis."
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Copyright 2008 Network World Inc.
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RE: Wireless By Daniel Njoroge on April 25, 2009, 6:06 am Reply | Read entire comment Please help me am trying to find a circuit for wireless switching
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