The switch is on

The two traditional market leaders in the wireless LAN equipment market appear to be taking new, though starkly divergent, paths. Cisco Systems, fresh off the late-March closing of its acquisition of Airespace, the WLAN switch and management vendor, was talking up new strategic initiatives, including wireline/wireless integration. Cisco also has begun a gradual migration of customers of its traditional access points over to the lightweight access point, WLAN controller and control system software that had been developed by Airespace, according to David Leonard, co-general manager of Cisco's wireless enterprise networking unit (Airespace founder Brett Galloway shares management duties with Leonard.)

Cisco also has some fairly specific plans for how it will evolve the former Airespace products. Leonard said Cisco wants to endow the Airespace products with a richer feature set and beef up the controller's scalability from its current support limit of 36 access points into the hundreds to address larger enterprises. In addition, Cisco, in the near future, plans to make the controller a blade for switches and routers.

Meanwhile, headed in a seemingly different direction is Proxim. The company that is second to Cisco in WLAN access point market share announced in mid-May that it would be headed for bankruptcy without an imminent infusion of funding or an overall buyout. A statement that accompanied Proxim's second-quarter earnings report said that the firm had “an immediate need for additional financing.”

That warning came five months after Proxim hired Bear Stearns to help the company explore strategic alternatives, including a possible sale. It also came not long after Proxim lost a patent lawsuit to Symbol Technologies, a ruling that resulted in a $23 million payout by Proxim.

Though Proxim's fate remained undetermined at press time, Cisco's Leonard said he does expect further consolidation in the WLAN equipment industry.

“Our customers really want wireless LAN as part of their access technology choices,” he said. “If you are in the LAN market at all, you will want to have wireless as a growing part of your portfolio, and I think that could drive further consolidation.”

Elsewhere in the WLAN market, the switching segment that looks to be at the center of that consolidation also is seeing some new innovation. Last month, Meru announced its Radio Switch, a new product line designed to deliver higher capacity to seamless virtual cells within an enterprise to address high-density voice and data needs.

The Radio Switch uses omni-directional antenna technology, which tends to be easier to configure and less sensitive to interference in a closed environment like a corporate enterprise, said Ben Gibson, vice president of corporate marketing for Meru Networks. It also uses a single-channel architecture to improve hand-off capability.

When deployed with a Meru Controller, multiple Radio Switches coordinate with each other to create up to 12 virtual cells that can boost aggregated coverage area bandwidth to 648 Mb/s. With the eventual evolution to 802.11n, Radio Switches will be able to support 1.2 Gb/s of aggregated bandwidth.

While interest in voice over WLANs for corporate enterprises is surging, consumer interest in hybrid Wi-Fi/cellular technology also is building rapidly. In-Stat released a new study last week, “Consumer Demand for VoWLAN/Cellular Combo handsets,” which stated that at least 84.6% of users surveyed were at least “somewhat interested” in owning a hybrid handset.

Cisco's Leonard said cellular carriers have yet to respond aggressively to that opportunity. “There is some hesitancy by mobile carriers to allow voice roaming,” he said. “The success of that will count on getting carrier cooperation, as well as enough handsets. For now, carriers may still be trying to figure out a business model that makes sense.”