Last year, Network World hosted a Wireless Networking seminar series. Ira Brodsky, president of Datacomm Research, led a comprehensive and exciting day of learning about how wireless is being deployed throughout the enterprise.

At the end of that series, I received e-mail from IT executives across the country who had attended and said their real concern was wireless LANs. Since Wireless WANs were not so much of a threat yet, they wanted us to really hone in on how to integrate wireless LANs throughout the enterprise.

With that in mind, we developed this year’s Technology Tour “Wireless LANs: Building and Managing a Well-Integrated 802.11 Network.” Co-moderating the tour with me will be Tom Henderson, a member of Network World’s Global Test Alliance and principal at ExtremeLabs. Tom is one of the foremost wireless networking experts around, having had hands-on experience with most of the equipment and software on the market. He also keeps up to date on what tomorrow holds for wireless LANs.

Our focus for this event is going to be squarely on how IT executives and network managers can cohabitate their wired and wireless networks without causing a lot of stress. From plotting out the network to monitoring access points, we’ll show you how to offer users all the benefits of wireless networking without losing control of your network.

IT pros have been scared off of wireless networking by countless stories about war driving, but Tom as well as representative from the leading wireless networking companies will show that if you start with a secure infrastructure, you can ward off intruders.

Tom will cover the intrusion prevention and detection tools available and how those meld with security tools you already have in place for your wired networks. He’ll cover the same kind of territory with wireless management tools - how you select and roll out tools that will work well with your current enterprise tools.

Tom and I will also work to unmask the confusion behind all the 802.11 specs. From frequency ranges to security features, we’ll talk about the benefits and drawbacks of each spec, including 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g.

By the end of the seminar, you’ll have a pretty good idea how to survey your physical space for wireless LAN access points, what tools are necessary to manage and monitor your network and how to integrate your wireless environment with your wired environment.

So join us in March for this four-city tour. To register, visit http://www.nwfusion.com/events/techtour.html and click on the preregister button at the top of the page.

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