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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.
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