Comparing costs of WLAN intrusion prevention systems

How do wireless intrusion prevention systems compare in terms of cost? NW’s Wireless Alert Newsletter editor, Joanie Wexler, made some assumptions and did some calculations to give some guidance. A WIPS scans your radio frequency environment and blocks suspect devices from connecting to your enterprise WLAN, and prevents your own users from connecting to unauthorized or malicious networks. Some are full-time, round the clock systems that constantly monitor with dedicated sensors; others do so periodically. Joanie’s analysis identifies an obvious but substantial fixed cost that is pretty constant across all vendors using dedicated sensors: paying to have the sensors installed and cabled. She estimated about $25,000 for about 50 sensors. She made several assumptions, among them an enterprise 11abgn WLAN of 200-250 access points, which are constantly monitored on both Wi-Fi frequencies. She has a pop-up chart of the results. Her estimated costs — capital spending and installation — for six systems from five vendors, show a wide range: from $70,495 (AirMagnet) to $128,330 (no surprise: Cisco). (You can get details on Joanie’s math by emailing her at joanie@jwexler.com or by visiting Webtorials,which requires a free registration, for a PDF of the charts she prepared. UPDATE: new Webtorials URL, replacing the original.) Rival WIP systems can be tough to compare at any level, as Joanie has noted in her ongoing coverage of this, most recently in a look at 11n intrusion scanning. Price alone isn’t the sole criteria obviously. Do you have WIPS deployed? Or are you planning on one? What are your main selection criteria? How important is price? Have you been able to negotiate on price with the vendors?