A New Era for WLAN

Once a tactical, “hot-spot” curiosity, Wireless LAN is quickly gaining recognition as a strategic asset in more and more organizations, across every industry.

Years of pilots and limited deployments have provided a glimpse at what may be possible – assuming that the WLAN infrastructure could support all applications and all users, everywhere and anytime, with the lightest burden on IT, the highest possible performance, and a “future-proof” design. Sound impossible?

Clearly a new generation of applications, including voice over WLAN (VoWLAN), locationing, ubiquitous connectivity and multimedia communications, requires a new generation of WLAN infrastructure. Extricom’s WLAN System is that new class of solution, designed for the new era of higher business expectations.

Pervasive Connectivity

Connectivity for all data users, everywhere, means having to overcome long-accepted trade-offs between WLAN coverage and capacity. The Extricom solution is the only one in the market that maximizes both coverage and capacity, thanks to its multi-layer architecture, TrueReuse™ bandwidth multiplication technology, and the elimination of co-channel interference.

Voice over WLAN

Voice demands mobility. Yet you only need to look at the problems of AP-to-AP handoff to realize that 802.11 Wi-Fi is inherently not mobile. The advent of voice, whether in the form of handsets or badges, presents a challenge that cell-based, data-centric WLANs did not need to confront: how to add mobility to Wi-Fi? Unencumbered by the legacy of previous generations, the Extricom WLAN channel blanket™ brings total mobility to Wi-Fi, as evidenced by:

• No handoffs between APs
• Full security (including WPA) session continuity while moving
• Uplink path diversity that makes voice communications consistent and stable, regardless of where you are relative to the network of APs

Locationing

Where are your assets? Whether people, devices, equipment or goods, the Extricom WLAN, coupled with Wi-Fi tags, is now an essential tool for maintaining control and responsiveness like never before. And thanks to the flexibility of placing APs wherever needed, unlimited by RF constraints, the Wi-Fi location based service is more accurate, lower maintenance, and easier to deploy, while Wi-Fi tags benefit from significantly longer battery life.

Security

In an Extricom WLAN, security is a transparent enabler, with the privacy of over-the-air communications ensured by the strongest 802.11i encryption without impacting wireless performance.

In addition, the Extricom system provides full mobility without compromising on security. This means no dropped security sessions or damaging handoff delays, even for WPA clients, thereby enabling everything from phones to PDAs to handheld scanners. And with Rogue AP detection built-in to the Extricom solution, you get the benefits of a dedicated sensor overlay without the costs of separate sensors.

To find out more about how Extricom is delivering a secure, high-performance WLAN with leading security vendors AirTight and Juniper, please take a look at our Application Solution notes.