Lisa Phifer

Interop has always been a popular place to unveil new products and major upgrades. 2008 was the year for enterprise-class 802.11n, with many vendors announcing Draft N-certified gear and related radio/architecture improvements. By all accounts, those products are now enjoying considerable success—InStat expects enterprise AP shipments to jump from just 148,000 in 2008 to 726,000 […]

Wireless mobility has gone mainstream. On the shrinking show-floor of Interop Las Vegas 2009, bigger, badder hardware has taken a back seat to innovative software and deployment strategies: virtualization, cloud computing, and mobile applications. Enterprise networking is becoming less about plumbing and more about business process enablement—on-site and off. Wireless plays a starring role in […]

Review: TRENDnet TEW-664UB Specifically, business WLANs designed for high-density usage and demanding multimedia applications are now being deployed in the 5 GHz band, with WMM prioritization. But when those workers head home, they usually return to unruly competition in the 2.4 GHz “junk band.” Given the coming wave of sexy multimedia products that will require […]

Aerohive HiveOS 3.2 HiveUI List Price: Included in HiveAP 320 ($1,299) or HiveAP 340 ($1,499)Pros: Quick-and-easy setup; built-in RADIUS server and captive portal; attractively pricedCons: Little status monitoring; no reporting; limited to one hive with up to 12 members                                  Aerohive’s cooperative control strikes a unique balance in the WLAN architecture debate. HiveAPs are provisioned by […]

AVerDiGi EB1704HB WiFi-4 www.avermedia-usa.comPrice: $1,599 (CMOS) or $2,599 (CCD)Pros:   Super-simple hardware installation; plug-and-play set-up; Web and mobile video viewersCons: No Pan-Tilt-Zoom over Wi-Fi; non-reconfigurable WLAN; motion recording problems        When we saw the AVerDiGi EB1704HB WiFi-4 at CES 2009 ShowStoppers, we were intrigued. At first glance, this plug-and-play Network Video Recorder (NVR) with four […]

Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) promises to let callers use a single device to communicate over any available wireless transport, public or private. In carrier-centric FMC architectures, Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) plays a pivotal role by letting dual-mode handsets roam between networks without disrupting active voice calls or data sessions. But UMA-based services to date, like T-Mobile’s […]

Motorola RF Management Software v2.0 www.motorola.com Price: From $ 4,595 for 50 APsPros:   Strong visuals enable at-a-glance status and detailed performance analysis.Cons: Multiple conflicting task methods; little historical reporting.   When we took Motorola’s four-piece RF Management Suite out for a test drive, we used the integrated RF Management Software v2.0 (RFMS) component to visualize […]

Sharks swim continuously to avoid sinking to their death—but that doesn’t prevent them from circling back through familiar waters. In the hardscrabble enterprise WLAN market, vendors that stop innovating also quickly fall from grace. But those that flourish aren’t moving ahead without a backwards glance. In fact, some of today’s hottest players are combining creative […]

Before Wi-Fi can displace Ethernet as the LAN access method of choice, enterprises must learn how to accurately plan, budget, provision, troubleshoot, and tune WLANs. To facilitate this, Meru Networks believes that WLANs must become more predictable by exploiting the advantages of virtualization.   “Micro-cell [WLAN] adaptation and variability is the main cause of high […]

Let’s face it: Wi-Fi clients are greedy. Designed to think only of themselves, 802.11 stations associate to the best available AP and send data as fast and as often as they can. In lightly-populated WLANs, nobody notices because everyone is happy. But in dense or over-subscribed deployments, selfish clients can hog bandwidth, overload APs, and […]

Motorola Mobility Services Platform, RF Management Edition www.motorola.com Price: from $ 6,500 for 50 APs Pros: Scalable config and software management, enabler for RFMS monitoring Cons: Jam-packed GUI, overlapping events, no per-user resource views Motorola’s Mobility Services Platform (MSP) provides single-point “care and feeding” for distributed WLANs composed of Motorola switches, access points, and clients. […]

Today, Meru Networks announced RF Barrier, the next salvo in the industry’s on-going battle against piggybackers and hackers who access networks from parking lots or other areas within range of a corporate WLAN’s signal. Unlike counter-measures that use encryption to scramble sensitive data, RF Barrier fights fire with fire by transmitting over Wi-Fi signals that […]