Airespace introduces QoS, IPv6

Wireless LAN management platform vendor Airespace has announced enhancements to its Airespace Control System and embedded software that will support over-the-air quality of service for voice and the IPv6 protocol.

Alan Cohen, vice president of marketing at Airespace, said the system was originally designed to support the eventuality of voice over Wi-Fi with high capacity allocation for voice, traffic prioritization capabilities and inter-subnet latency of 50 milliseconds or less, which is a common industry standard.

The company’s latest software release supports priority queues, over-the-air rate shaping to ensure that traffic doesn’t exceed certain burst thresholds, and bandwidth limits for groups of users and individual users. These efforts mirror the requirements of the emerging 802.11e multimedia quality of service standard for wireless LANs, Cohen said.

“Wi-Fi is what will make voice over IP really interesting,” he said.

Airespace is supporting the IPv6 protocol, which includes IP Sec encryption and other security features, at the request of federal government enterprise network users and customer in Japan, where IPv6 already is considered a network requirement, Cohen said.

Airespace also has launched a new WLAN controller, the 3500, which allows the creation of distributed access point networks in enterprise coverage areas of up to 60,000 square feet.