The Lippis Report

By Ruckus Wireless

With physical data rates up to 600Mbps, many believe that 802.11n will replace wired networks within the enterprise and at home. But there's significant disparity between the 802.11n promise and the actual throughput experienced by users of the current generation of 802.11n systems. The most overlooked and under-optimized aspect of commercial 802.11n systems is the control over radio frequency (RF) variability. A robust, responsive RF layer is central to wireless network performance, particularly for Wi-Fi which operates in the open spectrum. It is ironic that most of the system products based on 802.11n, designed to make maximum use of the RF domain, do little in this regard beyond integrating more radio chains and antennas.

Ruckus Wireless Smart Wi-Fi technology combines advances in miniaturized multi-element antenna design and sophisticated RF routing software to direct signals onto the best paths in real time to deliver the highest possible performance and reliability in ever changing RF conditions. It also features client- and media-intelligent QoS to optimize multimedia transmissions. With 802.11n, Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi has been extended to optimize antenna operations with multiple radios and intelligent channel utilization software to overcome many of the challenges in realizing 802.11n's true potential.

By Extreme Networks

Wireless LANs have become pervasive in today's business environment. Mobile applications are driving innovations in wireless LAN technology as the exponential growth in users has put increasing demands on wireless bandwidth. This paper discusses the emerging 802.11n WLAN technology and suggests migration strategies for Enterprise customers.

With every IT paradigm transition comes not only increased bandwidth requirements, but an increased reliance on network services such as security, remote VPN access, QoS, and application classification to support a wide variety of corporate applications. Also new WAN services such as Metro Ethernet and 3G wireless are redefining WAN design. Between these demanding new applications and WAN options, lies the aggregation router, which has been primarily a narrowband device connecting sites via Frame Relay and MPLS, and thus has presented a bottleneck to new real-time collaboration technologies. This is all about to change, because a new era of WAN design has emerged. New router platforms are rare as their life-cycle is usually greater then a decade. So when one is announced it's the beginning of a long industry cycle and when it's Cisco who's making the announcement you know that it's an industry-changing event. Cisco has announced its Aggregation Services Router, or ASR, 1000 Series, which is focused on the high-end enterprise WAN and service provider edges. The ASR value proposition is rooted in a reduction of appliance hardware, lower WAN cost through aggregation and lower operational spend thanks to management break-throughs. Marie Hattar, Senior Director of Network Systems and Security solutions marketing at Cisco Systems is my guest as we dive into the ASR and new WAN design options it enables. To get the cost out and performance into your WAN, listen to this podcast.

The edge or access of a network connects all end-points into an enterprise network infrastructure. The network edge is made up of wiring closet switches, which are usually fixed Ethernet switching devices. The market for wiring closet switches is evolving.

In the previous decade IT organizations had traditionally pursued an edge network that utilized shared hubs and switches to provide connectivity to end-points. The primary buying criteria was price per port with low price being paramount. These switching devices possessed few network services such as layer 2 forwarding, Virtual Local Area Networking (VLAN), Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and a configuration tool as their primary network management capabilities. In short the old network access model provided best effort connectivity services with little to no operational control.

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802.11n offers impressive improvements in rate, range, and price/performance thanks to significantly higher processing and power consumption than older WLAN Access Points (APs). A key question in the decision to deploy 802.11n APs is whether there is enough power delivered over 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) switch ports or compliant power injectors to run these Aps, since 802.11n's increased bandwidth and processing may require more than the 12.95 Watts provided in 802.3af switch ports. I interview Craig Mathias, a Principal at Farpoint Group and author of the recent report “802.11n Access Points and Power over Ethernet: Key Considerations” and Luc Roy, VP of Enterprise Mobility at Siemens Enterprise Communications which is shipping an 802.11n AP that operates with 802.3af PoE. Craig tested the Siemens AP3620 802.11n APs and shares the results.

By Cisco Systems

As the network has become an integral part of the enterprise and small- to medium-sized business, new applications have added new devices onto the network infrastructure. From IP telephony clients to new IEEE 802.11n wireless access points, the requirement to provide increasing levels of power to network end devices has grown dramatically. Cisco® was the first to develop the capability of providing power network end-points when it enabled power from an Ethernet switch port to its Cisco IP phone. From there, Cisco began work with numerous other vendors within the IEEE to create a standards-based means of providing Power over Ethernet (PoE). PoE is now a widely adopted IEEE 802.3af standard. Cisco Enhanced PoE is Cisco's extension to the IEEE 802.3af standard that supplies greater amounts of power per port. By expanding its PoE support to deliver more than 15.4 watts (W) per port, Cisco offers greater flexibility and mobility to users while offering greater operational manageability to network managers.

Local Area Network (LAN) changes have ebbed and flowed on a nearly consistent five-year basis. In 1990 the worldwide $100 million dollar plus 10Mbs shared Ethernet market was emerging as the LAN standard. It was only five years later that the introduction of 100 Mbs fast Ethernet and the introduction of Ethernet switching usurped 10Mbs shared Ethernet. Between 1995 and 2000 two very important introductions were made to switched LANs: virtual local area networking (VLANs) and 1 Gbs Ethernet. Now 10Gbs Ethernet modules and switches are the norm as price points and port densities have made 10Gbs downlinks and desktop connections economically feasible.

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Selina Lo the CEO of Ruckus Wireless joins me to discuss the emerging mid-tier enterprise WLAN market that Ruckus Wireless finds itself in the envious position of being alone within. Ruckus Wireless is the expert on RF and antennas for high performance and stable WLANs. Radio communications are subject to unpredictable behavior due to environmental dependencies and various flavors of interference. Yet it's possible to effectively mitigate many of these impairments through continuous intelligent selection of system operating parameters and a sufficiently agile antenna system. WLAN reliability has plagued enterprise WLAN deployments since their inception. Ruckus has invested into engineering solutions to these problems developed over the past three years supplying service providers with over 1 million WLAN solutions for IPTV services around the world. Their intellectual property and mid-tier market requirements could not be more aligned. If you are in the hospitality, retail, education or just a mid-tier enterprise company that needs a stable and easy to deploy WLAN solution, then you need to listen to this podcast.

A warm Happy Holiday wish to all Lippis Report subscribers, supporters and their families. We have a special Lippis Report for you. Zeus Kerravala and I review the important and game-changing trends of 2007 and predict what 2008 has in store for business and IT leaders. We then take a further look out to 2012 and paint a picture of what the industry will look like. We provide this analysis in both written and podcast formats.

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By Ruckus Wireless

Administrators of small-to-medium businesses or independent hot spots at hotels, stores, transportation centers, and other public venues are often frustrated by the limitations of wireless consumer products and have no time or budget for enterprise-class solutions. These companies need an affordable, easy-to-use alternative that is still robust and scalable enough to extend the reach of their wireless LANs, support existing and next generation services and provide reliable and predictable Wi-Fi performance.

This paper examines the opportunities and challenges associated with operating a small-to-medium business WLAN or public hot spot. It explains the benefits of a self-configuring platform that can deliver Wi-Fi more reliably to increasingly diverse devices and applications, covering larger areas and higher user densities, while minimizing total cost of ownership. Finally, this paper introduces the Ruckus ZoneFlex wireless LAN system and its attempt to fill the gap between current low AP and high-end WLAN platforms.

by Ruckus Wireless

This black paper provides detail on spatial multiplexing which can significantly increase data throughput as the number of resolved spatial data streams is increased. Each spatial stream requires its own TX/RX antenna pair at each end of the transmission. It is important to understand that MIMO technology, a major architectural element of 802.11n radios requires a separate radio frequency (RF) chain and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for each MIMO antenna. This increasing complexity ultimately translates to higher implementation costs as higher-performance systems are required.

By Avaya

Have you ever wondered why the sound quality on your phone seemed so poor after listening to your iPod? The reason? Limited bandwidth thanks to 20th century compromises between cost and quality resulting in narrowband audio. Today’s network infrastructure is not limited to these old constraints and much higher audio bandwidth is available. This paper explores the possibilities for better sound quality within IP telephony through the introduction of Wideband Audio technology and the business implications for improved productivity that the new wave of sound can offer. It will also explore how Avaya, one of the leaders in IP Telephony, has chosen to exploit the productivity potential for Wideband Audio in its new line of telephones. With all the time spent on communications in a typical day, improving audio quality makes for an improved work experience.

Bill Kish, Chief Technical Officer of Ruckus Wireless, talks with Nick Lippis about enterprise Wireless LANs and the new 802.11n standard. With the increase in bandwidth, spectrum and power of 802.11n many IT leaders are now starting to think through how to incorporate 802.11n into their network architecture. Backbone link speeds, access point and WLAN controller placement, security, power over Ethernet, wireless bandwidth and spectrum power are all factors which plug into the calculus of next generation WLAN deployments. Bill Kish is uniquely qualified to talk on 802.11n as he is an active participant on IEEE project 802.11, the organization creating the standard. He is also a co-founder of Ruckus Wireless, and their CTO. Bill offers a vision for how the industry will progress that I buy into. Here’s a hint, think of 802.11n as a platform not just a product.

With the communications industry transitioning toward a software and service model we thought it appropriate to ponder and highlight a few cool applications. As most Lippis Report readers and listeners know, communication silos are in the process of being integrated into office productivity and mobile computing application software thanks to unified communications. The days of transiting from the phone, to email, to IM, to voice mail, mobile endpoint, etc., will soon be gone. These applications will be available as a single launch point on a desktop, laptop and mobile device near you. With unified communications being that single launch point and communication vendors such as Avaya, Siemens, Cisco, Nortel, Mitel, ShoreTel, et al exposing their features to a web services application development layer, business and IT leaders will be equipped with the tools to inject communications into business process speeding up workflow or creating new processes altogether. It’s an amazing time. During Microsoft’s October 16 Office Communication Server launch, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s Chairman, used the term Communications Enabled-Business Processes. This is the first time that I can remember that the software industry used the same terms to describe the same opportunity as the communications industry. Bottom line, software and communications are in synch on the new opportunities ahead in this new era of communications. With these two huge industries motivated to work with each other, an explosion of new cool communications applications will be the result.

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