Ready to VOW

The year 2009 witnessed an overall decrease in the IT spendings. Enterprises
have put on hold their decisions for technology uptake. However, the WLAN market
during 2009 was quite stable, and many organizations did a rethink about their
future growth strategy and looked at the new cost efficient wireless options.
The enterprise WLAN market increased by more than 15% over the previous year.
The enterprise WLAN revenues have been on a rising route during Q3, courtesy of
a stronger demand in 802.11n based access points. At the same time, leveraged
demand drove an increase in the size of WLAN deployments.

Making a Buzz

WLAN is becoming the preferred medium of network access, and more and more
enterprises are considering the use of secure WLAN as a preferred access method
to connect desktops, laptops, printers and all kinds of end devices. An all
wireless network uses wireless MESH technology at the network distribution and
access layers, thereby providing considerable savings on wiring and the cost of
maintenance coupled with the resiliency and security mechanism. It is becoming a
big trend especially for the green field deployments.

There has been a substantial amount of innovation and integration of wireless
intrusion detection and prevention capabilities in the WLAN solution. With 802.1
and WPA2 encryption, WLAN provides a high level of security. Purpose built
sensors for wireless intrusion detection and prevention work in conjunction with
a dedicated wireless IP appliance.

Another emerging technology in this segment is IEEE 802.11n. This solution
will operate in the 2.4 and 5 GHz radio band, offering a backward compatibility
with the pre-existing 802.11 a/b/g deployments. The three primary innovations
are MIMO (multiple input and multiple output) technology, packet aggregations
and channel bonding. Together these techniques allow 802.11n solutions to
achieve a five-fold performance enhancement over the current 802.11a/b/g.

VoWLAN is the next big technology in the pipeline. It requires a voice
enabled wireless device, most commonly a PDA or a Wi-Fi handset, which looks and
operates like a cellphone, but sends voice as a discrete data packet rather than
an analog voice stream. The VoWLAN system allows all regular functions and
messaging applications available on wired phones to be available on the VoWLAN
devices.

Concerns of CIOs

Wireless LAN, while replete with the convenience and advantages, has its
share of concerns as well. Issues such as security, quality of service, range
reliability and speed are often raised by enterprises.

However, most network analysis vendors offer WLAN troubleshooting tolls or
functionalities as part of their product line. Wireless LANs present a host of
issues for network managers. Many enterprises offer security features like 128
bit WEP and WPA that can scramble for encrypt network traffic so that their
content cannot be easily deciphered by snoopers. Likewise, wireless routers and
access points incorporate access control features such as MAC address filtering
that deny network requests from unwanted clients. There are other security
mechanisms that may be built into the corporate wireless network systems.

This includes 24x7 intrusion detection and prevention, real-time wireless RF
environment monitoring and automated alerts, amortizing the cost of wireless
infrastructure across a number of mobility applications including data. Voice
and video, a single vendor management platform that can manage the entire
spectrum of mobility, right from wireless network elements to hand-helds are
some of the other major concerns raised by enterprises.

Green In Demand

Cost effective IT solutions that embrace environmental responsibility are in
demand as organizations start to reduce their carbon footprint. Solutions that
are quick to implement, require little or no capital investment, are
environmentally beneficial and deliver an immediate and quantifiable financial
return are highly valued. Organizations are looking for solutions that deliver
measurable savings for the wireless networks and support their green
initiatives.

Intelligent control measures can help in creating a culture of sustainable
business. These measures and tools improve operational efficiencies and reduce
the energy consumption of wireless networks. By implementing these measures, an
enterprise can gain momentum for its green IT initiatives.

Realizing the needs, players in this space are coming out with green
solutions to fulfill the growing demands of enterprises. For the wireless
networks, Cisco offers adaptive power management capabilities that are built
into the Cisco unified wireless network through its management platform wireless
control system. This solution allows the organization to shrink its carbon
footprint immediately by reducing the energy usage and operational expenses.

Motorola has designed integrated sensors and access points in a single
device. The wideband radio is purpose-built for sensors, and eliminates the need
for two devices to provide the same level of secure WLAN. This not only saves
costs, but also saves energy and cabling costs.

Challenges

The greatest challenge in wireless project implementation is the line of the
sight. Generally, radio signals require a clear path between antennas. The first
condition for the LOS link is that the two antennas can be connected with an
imaginary straight string. No object should block this line. Achieving this with
a short link is fairly easy. Moreover, in order to cover large distances, a
great height is needed. So, tower erection increases the implementation costs.

The second challenge is wireless management. As enterprises move to
capitalize on the benefits of wireless networking, the need for cost effective
WLAN management tools becomes acute.

Arpita Prem

arpitap@cybermedia.co.in