Bluewave Networks Cassatt Cast Iron Systems Convoq Deepfile Mirra PanGo Networks Strix Systems TurnTide Vontu

Company name: CEO Bruce Brown, a native Iowan who "knows a lot about barn owls," coined this name from the Latin equivalent. The metaphors are rich: Owls do their best work in the dark, they're ruthless predators and they're wise.

How did the company start? In April 2000, Brown teamed with five others, most from telecom software vendor Vertel, to create Bluetooth radio products. They switched focus to 802.11 WLANs in summer 2002, with Bluetooth deployments failing to catch on.

Funding: $34 million, including a $15-million fourth round that closed in October 2003.

CEO: Brown is formerly CEO of Efficient Networks, a DSL equipment maker acquired by Siemens AG in early 2001.

Products: Access/One Network.

Wireless networking all the way
The big irony, and headache, of WLANs has been the fact that "wireless" only referred to the connection between the client device and the access points. The access points themselves had to be connected via Ethernet cable to Ethernet switches, just like any other part of the wired infrastructure.

Strix actually proposes to make wireless LANs . . . well, wireless (see story about Strix' launch).

The company's Access/One Network product is a stackable set of modules, each roughly the size of a typical paperback book. The only wire each stack needs is a power cable. You can select a client connect module with either a 802.11b, g or a WLAN radio, to link to notebooks and other wireless clients.

One of the modules is a dedicated 802.11a 54M bit/sec radio, which replaces the Ethernet cable that traditionally connects a WLAN access point to an Ethernet switch. Proprietary mesh and routing algorithms, running in another module with security and network management software, route WLAN traffic through a group of these stacks.

One stack, or two if you want a redundant connection, incorporates a module with a 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet port to connect the entire mesh via one cable to a LAN switch. The antennas used by the radios are in a module that caps the stack.

Strix also offers a Bluetooth radio module. It says modules for other wireless technologies, such as ultra wideband or radio frequency identification, are future possibilities.