WLAN vendors make summer splash

Most of the news coming out of the wireless LAN industry this summer has been of the product enhancement variety, but this week's debut of start-up Bountiful WiFi is an exception.

The year-old company's first product is an 802.11b/g router that the company says can deliver two to four times the range of conventional devices. The Bountiful Router combines an access point with a four-port Ethernet switch; a WAN port; and a battery of security options, including Wi-Fi Protected Access with 802.1X and RADIUS authentication.

One key differentiator is an FCC-certified 2.4-GHz 802.11b/g radio running at 840 milliwatts. That compares with a maximum of 80 milliwatts for many rival products. Secondly, the radio, based on an Atheros chipset, uses a group of algorithms, software code and discrete radio frequency filtering components to create a clean, consistent and powerful signal.

A conventional 802.11b/g access point is generally considered to have a range of about 300 feet, though the data rate might be 1M bit/sec at that distance. Bountiful's router can reach 1,200 feet, according to company founder and CEO David Egbert. Citing "unscientific tests," he says the router has maintained an 802.11g data rate of 48M bit/sec at 600 feet.

The Bountiful Router costs $625.

Symbol, Cisco and more

In other wireless news, Symbol Technologies has released a 54M bit/sec 802.11g bridge that can be plugged into by Ethernet devices that can't be fitted with a WLAN adapter, such as point-of-sale terminals, medical equipment, time clocks, scales and printers. The new CB3000 Client Bridge then becomes, in effect, a wireless network interface card, making a connection to the nearest access point.

The CB3000 can support up to 16 Ethernet devices through a separate hub, which would plug into the bridge's port.

An earlier model, released in 2001, used only an 11M bit/sec 802.11b radio, supported up to eight clients, and lacked the newer security standards.

The price of the CB3000 is $285.

Separately, Cisco announced it is now shipping a new high-end wireless LAN controller, the Cisco 4400. It's the first WLAN controller jointly developed by engineers from Cisco and its recent acquisition, Airespace.

Click to see: Symbol's CB3000 Client Bridge

The model 4404 has four Gigabit Ethernet ports, and works with as many as 100 access points. It's priced at $35,000. Both can be fitted with an optional redundant power supply.

Cisco plans to introduce a modular version in the fall that includes Airespace-developed code and slots into the Catalyst 6500 LAN switch.

Also new is software from Meru Networks to improve wireless VoIP calls on the company's wireless-LAN controllers and thin access points. The Meru Voice Service Pak is an optional program with three new voice features, aimed at dense enterprise deployments of WLAN phones.

First, you now can limit the number of WLAN phones that connect to a given access point to preserve call quality. Calls over that number can be shunted to another access point or get a busy signal.

Second, the software for the first time automatically will balance call traffic among available access points. The software also can do dynamic error correction, so speakers won't experience gaps or noises from packet loss.

The Voice Service Pak is priced starting at $20 per voice client.

New software also is on the way from NetMotion. The company this week plans to launch Version 6.5 of its Mobility XE software, which provides a VPN for mobile users on WLANs and cellular networks. The release includes code that detects images in an HTTP stream to a client device, and then compresses them to speed the download. The degree of compression can be set at the administrator's screen.

Another change is increasing the options and actions that can be set through the Policy Management Module. For example, the image-acceleration level can be set based on variables such as the version of the client device or operating system, or both.

Pricing is unchanged, starting at $15,000 for 100 users, with the Policy Management Module priced at $6,500.