* Range of Wi-Fi alternatives for remote and small sites
Wi-Fi vendors have been giving some attention to branch and small offices, realizing that these environments will soon contribute significantly to an enterprise’s total cost of ownership for wireless LANs.
In addition, small stand-alone offices might eventually run all-wireless networks (or as wireless as you can get) to reduce the costs and inflexibility of cabled architectures.
Last time, I described a new $995 WLAN switch for remote offices from Trapeze Networks and how it compares with a competing product from Symbol Technologies. I also discussed a new small-office stand-alone access point for $599 from Proxim.
Here’s what some other vendors are doing for smaller sites:
* Airespace. The company’s 1200R Remote Edge Access Point costs $750. You centrally manage it across a WAN using a high-end 12- or 24-port Airespace 4000 WLAN Switch or 4100 WLAN Appliance at your headquarters WLAN.
* Aruba Wireless Networks. The company offers the $2,995 Aruba 800 switch for remote offices. The switch supports up to 16 APs, which each cost $395 or $495, depending on radio configuration. Aruba says it plans to make further streamlined remote-office announcements as early as next month.
* Fortinet. This company is known first for its security appliances, one of which happens to double as a wireless AP for small and midsized offices. The FortiWiFi-60 system combines a wireless AP with network-based anti-virus, firewall, content filtering, VPN, intrusion detection/prevention and traffic shaping – all for $700. The product can be centrally managed by the company’s FortiManager System, either locally or over a WAN connection.
* Firetide and Strix. These companies build 802.11 mesh products, which can be used in locations that are difficult to cable, which change frequently or where you just want the flexibility to plug radio nodes into an electrical outlet and be done with it. Firetide’s $799 devices are used for backhaul only; you’d still have to hang someone else’s WLAN access points off it for user access. Strix’s $800 to $900 modules support both backhaul and AP functions, in that clients associate with the devices, and APs also pass traffic to one another for backbone connectivity. You can plug in cabled devices such as printers and servers at the very edge of the wireless mesh in both architectures.
