AIRMAGNET AIMS FOR VoWLAN QUALITY

AirMagnet, a wireless LAN management software company, is announcing a new version of its network monitoring software this week that supports, among other new features, jitter and roaming diagnostics for emerging voice over wireless LAN deployments.

Network managers can use the new voice features in AirMagnet Version 4.0 for pre-usage testing, as well as live monitoring, to determine if voice call hand-offs between access points will occur smoothly and where coverage inconsistencies hamper voice quality. “With voice, a little glitch can be a bigger problem because voice transmissions happen in real time, and the break-ups are noticeable,” said Rich Mironov, vice president of marketing at AirMagnet.

Though wireless LAN architectures supporting voice may still be few and far between in the corporate enterprise market — with the exception being healthcare centers and government offices that ban the use of cellular technology indoors — InStat MDR recently reported that by 2008, the majority of wireless LAN gear being shipped from manufacturers will have integrated voice support. The current market also is lacking voice testing tools, but Mironov said AirMagnet is trying to stay ahead of the curve. “We were getting a lot of pull to do this from the companies shipping the most voice-over-IP products that want quality built into their deployments,” he said. “We can't wait until voice over wireless LANs are everywhere before we address the quality issue.”

AirMagnet also offers SiteSurveyor software for building wireless LANs that is useful for making sure there are no coverage gaps in voice deployments.

Mironov said other voice quality capabilities will be added to future AirMagnet software versions as voice over wireless LAN usage becomes more popular.

Version 4.0 also includes support for new authentication protocols, such as PEAP, TLS, FAST and Host PEAP. Additionally, the network policy management interface of the software has been improved with enhancements, including a glossary section that defines network problems that network managers new to wireless LANs might not be familiar with.

Lastly, just weeks after a group at the University of Queensland in Australia created a new kind of denial-of-service attack to promote awareness of newly apparent wireless LAN security weaknesses, AirMagnet has developed a diagnostic capability for the potential problem that is included in Version 4.0.