Enterprise IT managers who have rolled out wireless technologies in a big way reported this week at Interop that although the technology has come a long way, there is still work to be done.

For starters, they need better standards, easier-to-use devices and improved management.

"Management of these networks is the biggest problem, next to interference," said Frank Basso, assistant director of communications for Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif. "Especially when you are using wireless outside, you need more insight into what is going on at all times," he added.

Basso uses tools from Trapeze Networks to provide Wi-Fi at the racetrack, parts of which vary in elevation by as much as 350 feet.The technology is used for race cars' onboard telemetry systems, the track's hospitality locations and the organization's IT systems, among other things. Basso put in about 30 of Trapeze's outdoor 802.11a and 802.11b/g access points, installed at various angles to overcome the interference caused by the cars going around the track..

Basso said that improvements in network design have reduced problems, but still he'd like to see vendors provide more intelligence in the tools he uses to track performance on the outside Wi-Fi network. Right now, he is talking with Trapeze about the vendor exposing SNMP in its gear to enable better management, but he also is putting open source management tools, such as Cacti and Nagios, to work tracking rogue access points, users on the networks, associations and interference.

"I have set up the monitoring to look for deltas, something new on the channel, such as more users on or a lot dropping off," Basso said. "There is a need for tools to help point us to the problem and see what's happening on the network before a lot of users are affected."

For Oliver Tsai, director of IT at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, wireless technologies from Symbol help him support three campus networks with as many as 6,000 client machines, 200 hundred servers and about 10,000 network nodes. He says 90% to 95% of the center's buildings use the wireless network, which lets clinicians tap electronic patient data from COWs, or carts on wheels, or use tablet devices at patient bedsides.

"There is no limit to the number of systems they can access," Tsai said. The hospital uses wireless handsets designed for healthcare that are tied to a virtual switchboard, which can be configured to send messages to those who need to be notified in different scenarios. The hospital also plans to put wireless voice technologies in place. To do this, Tsai would have to design separate Service Set Identifiers and segment virtual LANs (VLAN) for the voice and data traffic, he said.