Eric Griffith

Legra Systems of Burlington, Mass., said this week that its product line, announced in April 2003 with the first wave of WLAN switches, is now generally available. Since that initial announcement, the company has added a couple of things to spice up the products, not the least of which is a built-in chip devoted entirely […]

The mesh networking architecture has been around as long as wireless LANs, but has never taken the market by storm. However, in the last few months, mesh — in which the hardware communicates with each other to create a self-configuring, self-healing set of connections — has been embraced by startups such as switch vendors (Strix […]

One of the first companies to offer an measurement and analysis tool for WLANs was Sunnyvale, Calif.’s AirMagnet, which early on had handheld software for WLAN-equipped PocketPCs. Later they added a laptop version and a distributed package that can be used enterprise wide. Back to its roots, AirMagnet this week announced the 3.0 versions of […]

The need for speed to effectively deliver audio and video over a wireless LAN may have been met this year when 802.11a and 802.11g became firmly established, but we’re still a ways off from the Quality of Service (QoS) traffic controls needed to make sure it works well. Look for QoS as part of the […]

LAS VEGAS — The floor of the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2003 show at the Sands Convention center is not overflowing with news in the world of wireless LANs (its patrons mainly stem from the cellular network side). But those that are here are showcasing the convergence between these two areas of wireless. The […]

Is the success of the wireless LAN switch market in question? You wouldn’t think so when you talk to the companies involved. The money keeps flowing in (Vivato alone got $44.5 million from investors like Intel this year; Airespace got $22 million in series C funding in July; last month, Aruba Networks got $20 million […]

In the days of the Internet boom when companies believed any product could be a success — no matter how useful or useless it might be (3Com Audrey? Microsoft Bob?) — there came a product category that still seems like it could catch on at any moment: the digital picture frame. Today, San Jose, Calif.-based […]

Price: $249.95 Pros: Support for DIVX, fast setup, support for 802.11g. Cons: Inscrutable and frequently crashing server software, boring UI, no local storage. Diskless media players are all the rage, with companies like SMC Networks, Linksys, and even long-time media expert Creative Labs announcing units lately with built-in 802.11. Beating them all to the punch […]

T-Mobile Hotspot, the public Wi-Fi arm of Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile USA, plans to address the issue of public access security by introducing 802.1X authentication as standard at all the company’s hotspot locations around the United States by next year. End-users at hotspots are perhaps among the most vulnerable in the world of Wi-Fi. Public […]

When the topic of video or audio traveling over a wireless LAN comes up — particularly voice traffic, as in any Voice over IP (VoIP) solution for the WLAN — you’ll almost always see the obligatory mention of 802.11e. This standard, currently undergoing revisions by the IEEE for approval sometime in 2004, holds the promise […]

Toronto, Ontario-based wireline service provider Allstream — formerly known as AT&T Canada until this past summer — announced today a deal to offer its business customers Global Roaming for Internet Access, the name of a service it will provide in partnership with GRIC Communications . “This is a package for our business customers inside and […]

Since launching the Wi-Fi ZONE program for branding hotspots back in March 2003, the Wi-Fi Alliance has certified 6000 public-access venues in about 47 countries. The nonprofit Wi-Fi Alliance is best known for its certification of products supporting 802.11x and its own Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) security initiative. They recently announced that they have reached […]