A chain of independent 7-Eleven convenience stores in central Oklahoma has completed a highly distributed Wi-Fi rollout to support a new inventory management system. Starting the wireless project from scratch has allowed the company to fully embrace wireless Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) mandates.
It's still a long way to Tipperary, but the Wi-Fi Alliance has begun early certification testing for voice interoperability and - for the first time - performance.
In putting together an evaluation of 802.11n vendor strengths and weaknesses, ABI Research, which issued its 802.11n Vendor Matrix last week, has created a template you can use as a cheat sheet for your own assessments.
A recent, multidimensional evaluation of 802.11n wireless LAN vendors compiled by ABI Research reflects the complexity facing IT departments as they conduct their own assessments of enterprise-class 802.11n prospects. In what was more or less a photo finish, Meru Networks edged out its fierce rival, Aruba Networks, as the leading vendor in ABI's latest Vendor Matrix, released last week. Motorola took the No. 3 spot.
Several wireless technologies are contending to become the next-generation transport system for mobile video and collaborative business applications and services. The frontrunners in the WAN are WiMAX and Long-Term Evolution (LTE).
Lately, the spotlight has swung toward Long-Term Evolution (LTE), the so-called fourth-generation mobile broadband technology descended from GSM cellular protocols. CDMA veteran Verizon Wireless, for example, has switched to LTE as its future mobile service delivery platform. GSM-based AT&T is, unsurprisingly headed that way, too. And recently, mobile base station maker Nortel dumped its WiMAX product development in deference to LTE.
A confused reader has been pressing for details about the Anthony Marano fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) installation I described last week. In trying to cram the many dimensions of a complex situation into a couple of short newsletters, I fear I might have lost you, too. So let me attempt to clear up questions about the company's dual-pronged FMC approach by telling what I've told "Lane" on the Network World Wireless and Mobility community site.
The hybrid approach to fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) that produce wholesaler Anthony Marano has taken involves a few interesting configuration twists.
Chicago fruits and vegetables distributor Anthony Marano Company has settled on a hybrid fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) configuration to meet its intensive wireless voice and inter-network roaming requirements. It has installed a CPE-based solution and also subscribes to a carrier FMC service to get the job done.
For at least a decade, while vendors such as Cisco pressured enterprises to collapse their separate voice and data networks into a common IP infrastructure, the term "convergence" has often been used synonymously (and somewhat carelessly) with VoIP. In many circles, it still carries that meaning.
Meru Networks plans to ship beta software next month that lets its year-old 802.11n wireless LAN gear support the company's heralded Virtual Cell technology. That might sound anticlimactic to those who assumed that Virtual Cell was already a fait accompli in all Meru equipment, including its Draft 2.0 802.11n-compatible AP300 product family.
Tongues are wagging about the possible sale of wireless LAN company Trapeze Networks, and St. Louis cabling company Belden has been fingered as a likely acquirer.
In a perfect world, any Wi-Fi Alliance-certified 802.11 client device would perform consistently with any alliance-certified access point of the same network type. However, the alliance certifies products for interoperability only; it makes no statements or judgments about how well any given client/AP pair performs. So at this juncture, say experts, there will be some variability in the performance of different client devices.
Draft 2.0 802.11n network performance is dependent on so many variables that it can be challenging to get your head around just what to expect with the next-generation Wi-Fi LAN systems. However, Wi-Fi chipmaker Atheros has shared some ballpark throughput numbers based on hypothetical modeling it has conducted in-house.
So we now have a nationwide WiMAX network officially under construction that's backed by WiMAX enthusiast Intel, open-access activist Google and several cable companies eager for a mobile service to sell as a complement to their traditional offerings. What might this lovefest mean for open-access service packages and pricing? Will it be "same old, same old" or will we get totally cool new stuff?
After a few false starts, mobile WiMAX in the U.S. has been revived, at least on paper. Sprint Nextel and Clearwire have resolved their partnership differences with a joint venture intended to yield nationwide WiMAX network services backed by a host of industry heavyweights. There's just one thing, though: where are the WiMAX client devices?
An IETF working group headed by execs at Cisco and wireless sensor company Arch Rock is looking to optimize a routing protocol for wireless networks that have limited power, memory and processing resources.
'We established in the last newsletter that you need multiple transmit and receive antennas working in parallel (a.k.a. "MIMO" technology) to conduct spatial multiplexing. We also learned that spatial multiplexing is a mandatory component of the 802.11n standard and is the primary means to 802.11n's increased throughput promise. But what's the ultimate difference in so-called 2x2 and 2x3 architectures, if they both support two spatial streams?
802.11n's intimidating nomenclature contains such mysterious terms as MIMO, spatial streams and spatial multiplexing, which can quickly freeze a network manager's brain. What do these specs really mean in the context of a real-world 802.11n wireless networking environment?
Like the perpetual student, some extensions to the 802.11 wireless LAN standard seem as though they, too, will linger in an indefinite state of development. However, one of those dallying standards, 802.11s for mesh networking, has suddenly registered a pulse.
Do you want wireless LANs to remain a mobile adjunct to your wired Ethernet? Or are you looking to 802.11n someday becoming a bona fide replacement for Ethernet in your corporate access network?
Many of the wireless LAN vendors are announcing products today that they hope you'll rush to see in demo mode when the Interop trade show kicks off next week in Las Vegas.
At least three industry consortia are attempting to ease development efforts for mobile application builders with Linux-based, open mobile operating system development initiatives. These efforts carry noble and productive intentions. But if there are multiple ones, leaving one "open" platform to differ from the next, will we be back to where we started?
Wireless Buyer's Guides These guides cover more than a half-dozen topics to give you information, insight, and comparisons on the latest in wireless
technology.
