Symbol dramatically reduces the cost of enterprise wireless networking ownership

The new product is designed to deliver advanced wireless networking services and application-specific security to IEEE 802.11b (Wi-Fi), 802.11a, 802.11g and legacy Symbol Spectrum24 (802.11 and 802.11b) wireless networks and mobile systems.

In the wireless LAN (local area network) market today, enterprise customers need to buy, integrate and manage separate products for application-specific wireless security, network management and wireless connectivity. Symbol has engineered all these capabilities into the Mobius Axon Wireless Switch, which centrally delivers wireless connectivity and features through low-cost Mobius Axon Access Ports.

In its first commercial deployment, the Mobius Wireless System supported more than 1,000 wireless users in public "hot spots" at the Georgia World Congress Center for NetWorld+Interop and COMDEX Atlanta 2002 in early September.

The Mobius Wireless System uniquely appeals to all enterprise market segments:

• The system provides investment protection to existing customers in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, government, transportation and logistics.

• It dramatically lowers initial investment costs for the emerging healthcare, hospitality, education and general office space markets, where expenditures for laptop PC wireless applications have traditionally been difficult to justify at current system costs.

• It reduces the technical, deployment and management challenges for Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) rolling-out Wi-Fi wireless "hot-spots."

According to IDC, WLAN revenue will grow more than 20 percent annually during the next four years. "Between 2002 and 2005, companies worldwide will spend over $7 billion on WLAN equipment and over $40 billion on WLAN related services to provide their workers with wireless mobility," said Jason Smolek, IDC Research Analyst, Enterprise Networks and Wireless LANs. "WLAN vendors who can lower ownership costs by providing more consolidated features and functionality, and effectively address management, security and evolving wireless standards, will help organizations focus on improving work-flow operations with the kind of innovative applications that WLANs are designed to support."

"We have achieved a level of innovation that has essentially moved wireless networking to its next generation," said Graham Melville, Senior Marketing Manager EMEA, Wireless Systems Group, who was in Dubai to brief customers and partners on the new technology. "Until recently, a retail store with a pharmacy, for example, needed separate pieces of equipment to support and secure various in-store wireless mobile computing and POS (point-of-sale) applications. We have put all the essential capabilities into one system, so that organizations no longer need to buy separate pieces from multiple vendors, or costly pieces from one vendor, to achieve secure application-specific wireless networking."

The Mobius Wireless System is a single wireless networking system that tightly integrates into the wired-enterprise network core and delivers advanced wireless services and connectivity to the network edge. This single system delivers centralized intelligence, management and security at the networking switch layer. The Symbol approach is significantly more economical when compared to enterprise-class 802.11b and 802.11a (or dual mode) WLAN access points and provides an intelligent adoption path for 802.11a and 802.11g.

Through VLAN (virtual LAN) architecting and policy-based networking, the new Symbol system can allocate wireless bandwidth, security and networking services by device, by user, by application and by location, all from a single access port.

The Mobius Wireless System features two hardware components - the Mobius Axon Wireless Switch and Mobius Axon Access Ports - and a suite of software components, including the Symbol MobiusGuard security portfolio (featuring Symbol KeyGuard(enhanced TKIP), Kerberos authentication, IEEE 802.1x, EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS with RADIUS, AirBEAM Safe Wireless VPN, and planned VPN integration); AirBEAM Manager wireless network management; and the advanced wireless networking services currently available in Symbol Spectrum24 access points.

The Mobius Wireless System enhances mobility performance, quality of service (QoS), security, network (LAN) integration and class of service (CoS). The solution brings traditional networking practices to wireless networking by providing Layer-2, Layer-3 and Layer-4 switching, all controlled and managed by an elegant XML-based (Extensible Markup Language) or CLI (Command Line Interface) user interface. To provide investment protection for legacy Spectrum24 (802.11 Frequency Hopping and 802.11b) access points, Symbol can offer a migration path so that these access points can be adopted as Access Ports by the Mobius Axon Wireless Switch for additional security features and other networking services.

The Mobius Axon Access Port, unlike existing enterprise-class access points, is a low-cost physical end-point for the wireless switch. The Access Port has a high performance, integrated omni-directional antenna (3.5 dBi), support for Power-over-Ethernet (POE) [IEEE 802.3af and available proprietary types], and Plenum-rated (fire retardant approved) plastic housing. The Access Port, with a single plug for Cat5/6-Ethernet cables (POE supported), requires no configuration and can be placed on the desktop, attached to the wall or mounted above or below most office ceiling tiles (click on 'Graphics Library' at www.symbol.com/news/ for photos.)