Aruba boosts wireless LAN management

Aruba Wireless Networks this week plans to unveil software designed to give its switch customers more control over wireless LANs.

The software lets companies manage hundreds of access points linked to an Aruba 5000 switch, a wiring-closet device that plugs into corporate networks.

The initial switch release in April carried software for securing WLANs and for doing some device configuration and radio frequency monitoring.

Johnson & Wales University, which is based in Providence, R.I., and has four other campuses across the country, is using the new software programs to set up and manage WLANs at three of its campuses, including the largest one, in Denver. The school has installed a mix of 50 Aruba access points and air monitors (which are simplified access points for scanning radio waves), and on each campus an Aruba switch.

Joshua Wright, the school's senior network and security architect, used Aruba's new RF Plan application with an AutoCAD file of the Denver campus floor plans. With the programs, he created a map of where the Aruba radios should be set up and what their initial configurations should be, such as channel selection and radio power level. All this data resides in an Aruba 5000 switch in Providence.

In Denver, a local cabling contractor used the software's printout to install the Aruba access points, which Wright says then contacted the Providence switch, downloaded the configuration data and began broadcasting as part of the Denver WLAN.

RF Plan is only part of the new software package.

RF Director is the core management application, which now will ship as a standard package on the Aruba 5000. The software creates a GUI through which administrators can get an overview of the WLAN. "I can see things like the number of users associated with an access point, the number of authenticated users who are not associated, and load and utilization patterns," Wright says.

RF Director also is the umbrella application under which run additional management applications from Aruba and third-party vendors. Later this month, Aruba will release a plug-in for WildPackets' AiroPeek NX, which is a program for doing advanced WLAN traffic analysis, problem detection and diagnosis.