NEW YORK - Wireless LAN equipment vendors drew sharp contrasts among themselves in the spirited debate of Network World's Wireless LAN Showdown last week.

At the CeBit America trade show, four vendors shot holes in each other's arguments while struggling to put forth their own distinct visions of how wireless networking should be done. The result was a clear divide between the two established wired-network vendors, Cisco and Extreme Networks, and the two wireless start-ups, Airespace and Aruba Wireless Networks.

Ron Seide, senior product line manager for Cisco's wireless networking business unit, touted the company's "integrated approach," in which higher-level functions such as security and quality of service are handled across wired and wireless networks by the recently announced additions to the high-end Catalyst 6500 switch.

"What if you don't have a Catalyst 6500?" asked Alan Cohen, vice president of marketing and product management at Airespace.

Seide responded that Cisco's research showed that companies of the size that might need Layer 3 mobility would be likely to have the 6500 already installed.

Keerti Melkote, vice president of marketing at Aruba, countered that Cisco's approach still requires wireless access points that are heavy on both functionality and cost, and any security-related functions would mean further costs in the form of additional blades for the 6500. Aruba favors a "thin" access point with centralized management.

Seide retorted, "The so-called thin access point is just as fat as other access points," with as much processing power and other hardware overhead. Plus, customers still have to buy the corresponding central controller or it doesn't work. "It's just redistributing the costs companies pay," he said.

Seide further defended Cisco's Catalyst 6500-centric approach, saying that it's just the beginning and hinting that other, less-expensive equipment would support WLANs in the future.

Like Seide, Extreme's Vipin Jain promoted the idea of an integrated approach. "We introduced the idea of unified access more than 12 months ago," said Jain, vice president and general manager of LAN access.

He said security and other functions "need to work seamlessly across wired and wireless." Otherwise, he warned, two parallel networks would be created, adding complexity.

"A lot of things [Jain] said are true - if you're trying to protect your switch," Cohen said. "This new access method [wireless] has different physical properties" and therefore requires a separate approach.