Putting the 'enterprise' into wireless LANs

As wireless LANs have rocketed into the consciousness of corporate managers in the past year or so, existing and prospective vendors in that space have been quick to point out how not to build a WLAN. Stay away, they say, from the temptation of building your network using a shopping cart full of those $100 access points from your local Circuit City. Enterprise WLANs need more. Recent examples prove the case.

While a basic, single access point WLAN servicing a handful of clients is simplicity itself, expanding that network with a second access point to handle a few more clients over a little larger area causes an immediate spike in complexity.

With one access point, roaming is a non-issue, selection of the radio frequency channel for the access point is mostly arbitrary, and performance is likely far less important than just the ability to work untethered. Scaling to enterprise level, though, these and other issues arise. Some can be resolved with overprovisioning and careful RF planning. Others require technology solutions that go well beyond what can be had in "plain vanilla" 802.11b/a/g standard gear.

Two recent projects of mine, although hardly the only examples, provide some good insights into the types of innovation that are defining true enterprise-class wireless solutions.

Like Airespace, Meru, NEC and some others, Airflow Networks has a vision that is tightly coupled with the emergence and integration of voice and wireless. The company sees both hard-wired VoIP traffic becoming wireless and the majority of our mobile phones soon becoming equipped with 802.11 technology and being able to hop onto our corporate LANs.

With voice on the network, the issue of roaming - your WLAN traffic being handed off from access point to access point as you move about the building - becomes critically important. Where the signal degradation and "re-association" process of "standard" roaming are of little consequence when you're walking down the hall with your laptop under your arm, they can be more than a nuisance if the wireless device is a phone at your ear.