Interop WLAN preview

Vendors debut multi-radio, pre-N APs with enhanced redundancy and monitoring

Industry analysis by expert Joanie Wexler, plus links to the day's wireless news headlines

Many of the wireless LAN vendors are announcing products today that they hope you'll rush to see in demo mode when the Interop trade show kicks off next week in Las Vegas.

A number of the announcements are aimed at boosting the reliability and availability of the 802.11n WLAN environment. With its 100Mbps+ throughput, 802.11n is campaigning to become a full-blown replacement for wired Ethernet in enterprise access networks. As such, WLANs will eventually require Ethernet’s high availability levels.

Here’s a brief synopsis:

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Many of the wireless LAN vendors are announcing products today that they hope you'll rush to see in demo mode when the Interop trade show kicks off next week in Las Vegas.

A number of the announcements are aimed at boosting the reliability and availability of the 802.11n WLAN environment. With its 100Mbps+ throughput, 802.11n is campaigning to become a full-blown replacement for wired Ethernet in enterprise access networks. As such, WLANs will eventually require Ethernet’s high availability levels.

Here’s a brief synopsis:

* Meru Networks has announced the AP440, an access point with four, 40MHz channel-bonded Draft 2.0 802.11n radios in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands for load balancing, redundant backup and rogue scanning. In addition, a new virtual reality-oriented management capability lets you “walk through” the WLAN environment from a management station and see coverage patterns and signal strength in wireless’s three dimensions.

* Aruba Networks has introduced the capability for customers to define their own attack-detection signatures in its integrated RFprotect wireless intrusion prevention system. Also a new AP family of 11a/b/g radios can be upgraded over the air to support 802.11n using a software key when customer budgets allow. Finally, the company has unveiled a remote AP that speaks both Wi-Fi and 3G cellular while retaining the user’s corporate LAN access credentials.

* Aerohive has announced its initial pre-standard 802.11n HiveAP products. Two indoor models support two pre-11n radios each, and an outdoor model supports three pre-11n radios. (Compare Wireless Mesh products)

Meanwhile, last month, Motorola recently announced a three-radio pre-11n AP that allows you to use one of the radios as a scanning security sensor, and Extricom announced its initial 802.11n APs.

Not all products are available immediately; most will be shipping by early to mid summer. Most require more power than the standard 802.3af’s 15 watts. This can be achieved using a local power supply, power from two power-over-Ethernet switches, or using the 30-watt power levels of the still-evolving 802.3at power standard in early equipment from companies such as PowerDsine.

Read more about wireless & mobile in Network World's Wireless & Mobile section.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.