A recent highway project in Orlando had proposed that an off-ramp be built for a future neighborhood and development center. Because the area was planned for future development, this caused some debate within the community. Some argued that that there was no point to spending money on something that might not be possible in the future. Others argued that it was good idea to build the off-ramp and spend the money now so when the neighborhood and development center was ready, a cost savings would occur since building it now would save money in the future. Both sides have good arguments and after some healthy debate, the off-ramp was built for the future neighborhood and development center, which both are now thriving.

Well, what does this have to do with Cisco and wireless technology? This is a good example of how the 3600 Access Point was designed. Even with the pressures of time to market and cost management, the development team took the extra time to add the option for future modular expansion. The same debates in the Orlando community took place here between development engineering and product management. “It will cost too much and delay the release of the product (especially in an industry where time to market is essential)” versus “Let’s have modularity so we can address whatever future technology is available so our customers can take advantage of it without having to rip & replace their APs”. We like to say we’re “future proofing” the AP.

Well, the future proofing argument won, and the 3600 was released last January with an expansion module for additional features and emerging technology. Already in May  we announced the 802.11ac Radio Module that will support the emerging standard.

Now, we have another addition to this expansion: the Security and Monitor Module. Read More »

Tags: 802.11ac, cleanair, rogue detection, security, wi-fi, wlan

It’s summer and my kids have been testing for swim certification so they can swim in the big pool. When they complain about the swim exam, I assure them that it’s not only to be safe, but also  to validate that they have reached a recognized standard of performance.  Similarly, governments worldwide require proof of certification before allowing equipment, including commercial wireless devices and technology, to be deployed on their networks.

With the growing trend towards BYOD, countless organizations must strategize how to best protect data in-transit across wireless networks, while optimizing the benefits of a mobile workforce.  For government and public sector organizations, it is especially imperative that the solutions employed to mitigate risks associated with BYOD and WLAN are compliant with the highest standards and certifications.

Certification is an ongoing effort in a changing landscape.  Cisco maintains an active product certification program for government customers by staying as current as possible with certifications to enable our customers to confidently deploy our solution.  As of July 26, 2012, we are proud to announce the Common Criteria Certification award to one of our recent 7.0 software releases.

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Tags: access point, AP, byod, certification, Common Criteria, dod, fips, release 7.0, UCAPL, wireless LAN controller, wlan

Today is World IPv6 Launch day. World IPv6 Launch is a follow-on event to last year’s IPv6 day where IPv6 was used for a day. The World IPv6 Launch is the ultimate recognition of the “world” turning on IPv6 and leaving it on: a true milestone for the Internet.

Cisco, along with major Internet Service Providers, home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world are coming together to permanently enable IPv6. So as we celebrate the permanent launch of IPv6, one may wonder how enterprise networks can benefit from IPv6.  Not only will IPv6 benefit the core of your network but the WLAN as part of the overall network will benefit.

In the past, the perception was that the US Military and China were the ones who were driving IPv6 deployments. That is no longer the case; the fact that there are a limited number of IPv4 addresses doesn’t just affect the just Service Providers but also large enterprise customers. Whether you are a large manufacturer with plants around the world, a university with a growing number of wireless devices or a global financial bank, you all can benefit from IPv6.

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Tags: byod, enterprise networks, IPv6, mobility, wlan

802.11ac: The Fifth Generation of Wi-Fi Technology

In the last few months, there have been a lot of written on the emerging 802.11ac standard. This next generation of Wi-Fi promises to be very exciting since 802.11ac will address some critical pain points faced by users of 802.11n today – more bandwidth and more simultaneous users.  To help explain the technology, we put together a new Fundamentals video.  You’ll learn about new features such as:

• Operating in the 5GHz band
• Wider channels (80MHz & 160MHz) which means more capacity in the band
• Increased modulation with 256 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), providing a significant increase in throughput over 802.11n which has 64 QAM
• Downlink Multi-User MIMO which allows an AP to transmit to multiple clients simultaneously
• Up to 8 Spatial streams which doubles the number of spatial streams used in 802.11n

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Tags: 802.11ac, 802.11n, byod, mobility, mu-mimo, wlan

With all that has recently been written about BYOD, it’s clear that enterprise IT managers need to consider performance requirements on the wireless access point. With more clients accessing the network, the performance demands in terms of coverage and client density will increase. Furthermore, consumer devices such as smartphones and tablets may have difficulty connecting to an AP compared to a laptop. This could be attributed to the fact that most of these devices either do not support 802.11n or they support legacy 802.11g/a. If the devices support 802.11n is sometimes limited to 1x1 MIMO. An access point that has superior performance will be needed to address the growing needs of these new clients.

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Tags: 802.11n, byod, cleanair, ClientLink, wi-fi, wlan