Now that we've had some time to dig through our notes, I actually did discover some very cool products at Interop 2005 in Las Vegas. It's not always about the latest giant switch. . . .

Helium Networks was located about as far away from the entrance as possible, tucked in the wireless company zone. Helium was showing its Wireless Recon system, a hardware and software combination that lets network managers conduct site surveys or audit 802.11b/g/a networks in less time than it would take using traditional survey methods. SiteScout also let administrators collect real-time and precise location wireless measurements for ongoing maintenance.

The system includes a laptop with the company's SiteSense software sitting on the SiteScout hardware. The wheels of SiteScout measure distance and direction as the Wi-Fi card inside the laptop measures signal strength from all access points within range of the notebook. The location and signal-strength data is then compiled into a color-coded coverage map to let engineers look at signal strengths for each access point or group of access points. Once layouts are created, users can physically move access points and then recreate the coverage map and document changes. SiteSense also can help maximize frequency-channel assignments for access points, Helium says.

Two things struck me as cool with this system: the ability to get more signal-strength measurements tied to actual physical locations (integrating measurements within the wheels is superb), and getting measurements that more accurately represent the signal strength of an access point (most radio frequency spectrum-management systems take measurements at the level of the access points, which are often in ceilings, not where a laptop or PDA is likely to be).

The system (hardware and software) will cost about $4,500. Helium plans to ship systems later this month.

Data that sits on a USB hard drive is relatively unsecure - if a device is lost or stolen, anyone can access the data on the drive. Some systems use biometrics for authentication and encrypt data, but a lot of authentication and encryption processing needs to occur on a host PC. The Stealth device from Memory Experts International changes this. Stealth is a stand-alone, portable, USB-powered secure storage device that includes an on-board CPU and hardware-based cryptographic engine. This lets fingerprint scanning and matching, as well as password authentication, take place on the device. Data can be encrypted with 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard security and stored on the device through flash memory or on a microdrive, the company says.