* Cisco stays centralized with 802.11n gear
Cisco’s entry into the enterprise 802.11n market last week could hasten enterprise preparations to migrate to the next generation of high-speed Wi-Fi technology.
The wireless LAN heavyweight announced enterprise-class gear that it said is the first to pass the Wi-Fi Alliance’s 802.11n Draft 2.0 compatibility certification tests. Such certified products are deemed interoperable with one another at a basic connectivity level.
Most of the 802.11 enterprise-class equipment makers have made announcements about their plans for 802.11n and will be rolling out products after they complete Wi-Fi Alliance certification testing in the fourth quarter.
For its part, Cisco announced:
* The Aironet 1250 802.11n access point to ship next month for $1,299.
* A 48Gbps WLAN controller in the form factor of a module for its Catalyst 6500 Ethernet switches. The throughput increases will be needed eventually to support several hundred megabits per second of 802.11n Wi-Fi traffic.
* A power-over-Ethernet (POE) module for the family of Catalyst switches to supply the extra power that will be needed by the higher-throughput APs from a single Ethernet port without requiring a separate power injector. It is due to ship late this year.
* Associated software services.
Cisco hasn’t said anything about adjusting the architecture of its system’s data and control planes; in other words, the 802.11n gear will continue to make both traffic control and forwarding decisions in the centralized Catalyst-based controller.
Many of the other enterprise-class Wi-Fi vendors are beginning to distribute some data plane activity out to APs in their 802.11n systems to avoid controller bottlenecks and reduce latency of voice and other real-time applications. Among these vendors are Trapeze Networks with its Smart Mobile architecture and Nortel, which plans to integrate wired and wireless switching decisions in a new line of unified Ethernet switches next year. Colubris has from its inception distributed forwarding decisions and centralized traffic control and management.
