Buying wireless wares

The folks at H.J. Heinz Company know all about bargains from their experience in the retail grocery market, where profit margins are razor thin. They tapped that knowledge a year ago, when they went shopping for a wireless LAN to deploy in the Pittsburgh headquarters of the ketchup, soup and pet food maker.

If they were shopping today, they'd expect even better bargains from wireless LAN vendors, says Kurt Kleinschmidt, senior network analyst with Heinz.

At the time, Heinz network managers bought and tested wireless access points and client adapter cards from several wireless LAN vendors. Eventually they chose the Cisco Aironet 802.11b access points and adapters, mainly because of Cisco's early implementation of the Extensible Authentication Protocol.

Heinz held down deployment costs by using its own staff to install and configure 20 Aironet 350 access points, and set up wireless laptops for about 100 senior business managers and IT professionals. "We did good," Kleinschmidt says.

But today, with the economy sputtering and even more vendors competing in the enterprise wireless LAN market, Kleinschmidt and other network managers say they could do even better. Prices keep dropping for wireless LAN gear, especially for 802.11b products now that 802.11a are available. You can buy equipment from office supply stores, computer-electronics retailers and Internet sites (see graphic).

Heinz's purchasing department recommends buying through reverse-auction Web sites as www.freemarkets.com. Corporate buyers post a description of what they're seeking, and vendors and resellers bid against each other to get the order. "Wireless LAN equipment would lend itself very well to this kind of approach," Kleinschmidt says.

At least two dozen vendors offer products. A smaller number, including Agere Systems, Cisco, Enterasys Networks and Symbol Technologies, target the enterprise, and many of them specialize in vertical industries. Often working with third-party resellers, these vendors typically offer not only hardware, but also management applications, higher levels of security and a battery of consulting services.

As a result, you can buy wireless LAN products very inexpensively and install them easily, at least for small networks of a few access points. But to get the best deal, you have to know your business requirements and at least something about wireless LAN technology. "Understand what the issues are in both areas so you don't get snowed by the vendors," says Dennis Moul, IS manager for CoManage, a software vendor in Wexford, Pa. The company deployed about 12 Agere Orinoco AP-1000 access points and adapters cards for about 50 laptop users.

For larger deployments, one factor to consider is an upgrade path from 802.11b to 802.11a. This summer, when American University rolls out a complex wireless infrastructure spanning nearly 50 buildings on its Washington, D.C., campus, Cisco likely will get the sale. One reason is that the school's wired network is based on Cisco equipment, says Carl Whitman, the university's executive director of e-operations. What's more, Cisco recently announced the Cisco 1200 access point, which can hold 802.11b and 802.11a interfaces. "I had to have a rational way to speak to [senior management about] a future upgrade," Whitman says.

Whitman nevertheless expects attractive prices. "Cisco is already offering aggressive discounts to the higher-education market," he says. A volume purchase of hundreds of access points also gives him more negotiating power. However, he doesn't expect to haggle over prices as one would in a street bazaar. "It's a bit more polite and standardized than that," he says.

But where Whitman expects more open-ended bargaining is in software, especially a range of middleware products that will help adapt and tailor existing application interfaces and data to an array of different types and brands of handheld devices.

For example, Cisco has its Content Transformation Engine application that uses rules to reformat Web or other data so that it can be viewed on a Palm OS or Microsoft Pocket PC handheld. IBM has software to do something similar for Notes e-mail with handhelds.

In this case, it's not a clear-cut choice, Whitman says. "Everyone has to be looked at closely. We'll evaluate hard, and bargain hard." He also intends to speak to his peers who already have adopted wireless LANs.

Another crucial aspect of wireless LANs to consider is security. Nearly everyone accepts that the Wired Equivalent Privacy encryption scheme is inadequate. Drill vendors with questions about how their product solves the basic 802.11 security problems, integrates with existing network security and manages and distributes encryption keys.

Know your throughput needs, too. For 802.11b and 802.11a, the actual bandwidth to users is less than half of the rated maximum. Keep in mind that wireless LAN access points are a shared medium, and users will compete for bandwidth.

When you're ready to talk to a vendor, services are one area that may give you lots of flexibility in negotiating the deal. Wireless LANs need specialized site surveys, installation and testing.

"I would push them hard on getting things like additional training or maybe integration work or troubleshooting," CoManage's Moul says. "In the current economic climate, it should be easier to get some of these."

Heinz's Kleinschmidt says competent network staffs can do some parts of the deployment and buy outside services as needed. "Services are often the most profitable part of a vendor's business, not the hardware," he says. "There's no standard 'fixed cost' for services, so this gives vendors more headroom [for negotiating]."

Expertise in radio technology among vendors, installers and integrators in such a fast-growing market varies enormously. "I'd want to have a good sense of what the vendor could do for me," Moul says. "The vendor should be close to the cheapest and come across as capable of actually solving the customer's problems, not simply dumping some technology on them and walking away."

Prices continue to drop for 802.11b wireless LAN equipment. 802.11a products are just starting to ship in volume, but you can negotiate a good deal for this gear, too. • 802.11b access points for enterprise use now range from about $500 to about $1,000, depending on power levels, antennas, security and number of slots • Agere Systems just cut the price of its AP-2000, which can hold one 802.11b and one 802.11a card, to $900 from $1,300. • Low-end 802.11.b access points can be had for rock-bottom prices. The Linksys WAP11 Instant Wireless Access Point recently was online for $130. • 802.11b adapter cards cost less than $100, one-third to one-half the prices of just a year ago. • The 802.11b Linksys WAP54A cost $300 on a Web site earlier this month. • The Proxim Harmony 802.11a access point at one online site has a price of $510. By comparison, the same site offered the Proxim Harmony 802.11b access point for $436. • Agere has announced a $250 802.11a module, with antenna, which plugs into its two-slot AP- 2000.

Contact Senior Editor John Cox

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