* Admission control, integrated QoS join CCX
Cisco has been busy not only integrating its newly acquired Airespace Wi-Fi product line with its existing Aironet products. It has also been focusing on merging its VoIP capabilities with wireless LANs.
As noted in the last newsletter, the company’s 7920 Wi-Fi handset was recently enhanced. In addition, Cisco officials say that the latest release of Cisco Compatible Extensions software, Release 4.0, is voice-centric.
The release is in CCX partners’ hands now and is expected in the commercial marketplace by year-end. CCX-v4 reduces handoff time across access points, thereby decreasing latency, and extends battery life, says Pat Calhoun, CTO in Cisco’s Wireless Networking Business Unit.
The CCX program is one in which suppliers of WLAN client devices and chips license, at no charge, Cisco WLAN technology in a specification. Participants implement all elements of the spec and then have them tested for compliance and interoperability with Cisco Wi-Fi infrastructure products at an independent test lab. Calhoun says that about 90% of 802.11 silicon that ships today is CCX-enabled.
At the network layer, Calhoun says, CCX-v4 has features to integrate QoS across the wired and wireless sides of the network in a consistent way. In addition, Call Admission Control (CAC) is rolling into CCX v.4 “with all the tools for building a complex IP telephony environment.”
CAC capabilities will help manage a high density of users and balance the load among access points, Calhoun explains. “Admission control looks at the network as a whole, moving phones [among] APs to balance and prioritize traffic,” he explains.
For expanded handset support, Cisco’s CallManager IP PBX is slated to support Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) on the line side by year-end. Third-party handset makers that are starting to offer 802.11-capable devices (such as Research In Motion and Nokia) tend to support SIP-standard calling features, which should expand the number of phone options users have on a Cisco (or any other SIP-capable) 802.11 VoIP network.
