Cisco hedging its bets with WLAN game plan

Cisco last week finally answered customer questions on whether they should stick with Cisco's current and pricey wireless LAN product plan or embrace the WLAN products from the company's $500 million purchase of WLAN vendor Airespace.

The answer is: whatever works best.

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Cisco last week finally answered customer questions on whether they should stick with Cisco's current and pricey wireless LAN product plan or embrace the WLAN products from the company's $500 million purchase of WLAN vendor Airespace.

The answer is: whatever works best.

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Interop attendees will see both product lines this week, including Airespace switches and thin access points sporting Cisco colors and labels. They'll also see a new line of routers that double as WLAN access points, the latest example of Cisco's scheme to make WLANs an integral part of core network infrastructure.

"We're in an awkward early stage because we have two product lines," says Dave Leonard, who shares the title of vice president/ general manager of Cisco's Wireless Networking Business Unit with Brett Galloway, the former CEO of Airespace. "Investment protection is our guiding light. We'll support both Airespace and Cisco products."

Although the goal is integration, neither executive gave much detail about how that will be achieved. Galloway says Cisco will keep offering the two WLAN alternatives, even as it gradually shifts key functions into Cisco switches and routers.

"It takes forever for Cisco to kill a product line," says Abner Germanow, director of Enterprise Infrastructure with IDC. "The challenge [for Cisco] is stepping up and explaining where each WLAN architecture is most appropriate."

WLAN evolution

The WLAN market, unlike the more mature and stable Ethernet switch market, continues to breed innovation, Germanow says. "The market is moving from 'one size [architecture] fits all' to 'multiple sizes,' " he says. Whereas Cisco and Airespace spent the last two years bashing each other's architecture, now they're "one big happy family" precisely because they can offer customers whichever architecture they prefer, he says.

And of course the names have been changed: The Airespace products have been re-branded the Cisco 1000 Access Point, the Cisco 2000 and 4100 WLAN Controllers, and Cisco Wireless Control System for network management. They join the Aironet access points, Catalyst 6500 series switch with the Wireless LAN Services Module and CiscoWorks Wireless LAN Solutions Engine to manage them.

Galloway says they are focusing on three integration areas. The first, due sometime later this year, will be software that will let current Aironet access points talk to, and be managed by, an Airespace controller. This new code will add Lightweight Access Point Protocol to the Aironet devices, along with other features the Cisco executives wouldn't disclose.

"Customers are hugely positive about this," Galloway says. "They can use an Airespace controller for security and ease of use, also use our intrusion-prevention features and location services, and we aren't going to make them rip out their Cisco access points."

In the meantime, a number of Airespace software upgrades and new products under development at the time of the acquisition will roll out in coming months. These will include a new high-end switch and an outdoor wireless mesh access point.