Bigger players eye WLAN switch arena

Some of the biggest names in wireline switching are readying products designed to incorporate wireless LANs more fully and securely into enterprise networks.

Those plotting announcements include:

•   Enterasys Networks, which is expected to unveil in a few weeks a switching architecture that uses specialized chips to control packets from or to a wireless LAN.

•   Nortel, which according to one source familiar with the company's plans, will introduce an "appliance" that sits behind a group of access points to secure and manage them, along with a wireless access point. Nortel declined to comment, other than confirming it will make a wireless LAN announcement the week following the CTIA Wireless 2003 show.

•   3Com plans this week to unveil at the CeBIT show in Germany details of its first 54M bit/sec 802.11a wireless access point. 3Com won't say whether it has any sort of switched architecture in the works.

•   Cisco, a leader in the wireless LAN access point market, declines to say whether it has a wireless switch in the works.

Discussion of tying wireless LANs into traditional wired networks largely has been the domain of a handful of start-ups, such as Aruba Networks and Trapeze Networks, plus wireless veterans such as Proxim and Symbol Technologies. So far, there's been more talk than product.