Eric Griffith

As municipal Wi-Fi deployments continue to gain momentum, Cisco Systems wants to be there for the providers and carriers trying to answer a request for proposal (RFP). Its solution is called ServiceMesh, a bundle of all of Cisco’s outdoor wireless offerings. “We’ve seen cities ask a provider to answer an RFP with some kind of […]

The physical layer of the 802.11a and 11g standards has an “unavoidable packet loss issue,” according to vendors VeriWave and Aruba Networks. VeriWave discovered the issue this past summer during product testing, and reported it with Aruba to the IEEE 802.11 Working Group’s meeting last September. “One of our tests is a throughput test, which […]

Last week at the Mobile Business Expo (MBX) in Chicago, Symbol Technologies unveiled the latest radio frequency (RF) switch in its Wi-NG series. The new RFS7000 will be the first from the company to control 256 802.11a/b/g access points per switch, and supports clusters of 12 18 switches to improve performance and provide redundancy if […]

The city of Boston took its first tentative steps toward citywide Wi-Fi this week as mayor Thomas Menino plugged new hotspots and announced plans for a hotzone. All of these projects are part of a learning stage that the city’s Wi-Fi nonprofit company wants to go through before issuing a formal request for proposals (RFP) […]

Cisco System’s acquisition last July of Meetinghouse Data Communications — a maker of RADIUS server software and clients supporting 802.1X authentication — has led directly to the networking giant now offering its own 802.1X client (also known as a supplicant). Cisco Secure Services Client 4.0 is meant to work with any RADIUS/802.1X server, but replaces […]

Almost a year after acquiring rival GoRemote, iPass says it is ready to launch a service that integrates its own remote access with GoRemote’s fixed broadband services to offer one complete access service for mobile workers. Called iPass Virtual Office, the service — which enterprises can purchase for use by their employees — has a […]

Colleges, universities and even K-12 school systems have been among many of the early adopters using Wi-Fi for communication and learning in the classroom and beyond. A report called the Campus Computing Survey, done every year since 1990, says that in 2006, 51.2% of all college classrooms had wireless LAN (WLAN) access — and 68.8% […]

Sometimes all it takes is a big name to validate a fragment of an industry. That’s how the switch players felt when Cisco Systems bought out Airespace. And that’s how Cognio feels, now that Cisco will be reselling its Spectrum Expert software/hardware combination. “This relationship… validates interference as something that has to be dealt with […]

You see them on every medical TV show — doctors consulting clipboard charts, filled with reams of paperwork with delicate and critical information about the patient. How 20th century. Catalis of Austin, Texas certainly thinks so. Founded and run by Dr. Randy Lipscher, the company’s goal is to get rid of all that paper by […]

The Centrino brand name Intel slapped on its embedded Wi-Fi support in laptops arguably made wireless networks the household word they are today. This week, at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the chip giant revealed its plans for the future of what was once code-named “Santa Rosa.” It will couple draft 802.11n specification […]

Ultrawideband’s push into wireless universal serial bus (USB) took another step this week with the announcement from the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) — the non-profit organization behind the USB specifications — of the launch of the Certified Wireless USB Compliance and Certification Program. This gives vendors who make UWB-based Wireless USB products a place to […]

Wireless connectivity in handheld digital music players is gaining ground. The MusicGremlin service, with its iPod-like Gremlin player, connects with Wi-Fi; Microsoft’s much-talked-about Zune player will also feature Wi-Fi for transferring files. But what if you’ve already got a handheld — your smartphone, for example — and just wish you could use that to listen […]