Context & Continuity

Press Release: TRAPEZE NETWORKS ROUTS CISCO IN WLAN RESILIENCY TEST

Tolly Group Tests Show Wide Lead of Trapeze Networks over Cisco

PLEASANTON, Calif., November 17, 2008 – Today, The Tolly Group, a leading global provider of third-party validation services for IT vendors, has published a report showing Trapeze Networks (NYSE: BDC) offers its customers wireless networks that recover from failures 800 times faster than Cisco.

Specifically, the Tolly report says that Trapeze Networks, “delivers sub-second fail-over using Trapeze’s clusters wireless controller approach, while a comparable Cisco solution results in network downtime of 9 to 12 seconds.” The report goes on to say Trapeze Networks “exhibits less that 0.1 seconds recovery without interrupting applications, while the Cisco solution drops both FTP and VoIP sessions during recovery.” Trapeze Networks is making the report available free-of-charge and it can be downloaded here.

TRAPEZE NETWORKS OPENS SECOND R&D CENTER IN CHINA

World-Wide Network of R&D Centers Expands to Four

Beijing, China, October 14, 2008 –Trapeze Networks (NYSE: BDC) is opening a research and development center in the Hangzhou, China that is focused on embedded wireless technologies.  The center is the second in China for the company.

“Trapeze Networks continues to invest in China for three important reasons,” said James Reeves, vice president of product operations.  “China -- and the entire region -- is a huge market for Trapeze Networks so we want to ensure we’re developing the right product with the right features for this market.  Second, we think that tapping the wealth of world-class engineering talent in China is giving us a competitive edge.  Finally, having a Mandarin-speaking team in Hangzhou working with our manufacturing partners in Taiwan will accelerate our time to market.”

Jerry Michalski on Public Relations

A million years ago, I had the honor of doing a little job for Jerry Michalski when he was working for Esther Dyson.  Mr. Michalski is a Very Smart Person. 

For a variety of reasons, he has spent a bit of time thinking about public relations, especially as it intersects some of his mainline interests.  Recently, he reposted a note to his blog about public relations that is only a little bit dated as per its references to Scoble as an employee of Microsoft.  (Remember that?)   Nevertheless, it's a thoughtful look and think about the question he poses at the end of the post. 

Cisco Sets the Pace...

My colleague, Kevin Petchow has been very busy and very productive over at Cisco.  Doing what?  Re-inventing public relations: 

In March this year, Cisco launched the ASR 1000 Router Series. No big deal, but for the fact that it was delivered completely via social media. This was apparently Cisco's fifth most successful campaign, and according to the company it has proved to be a turning point for the way Cisco takes products to market: "virtually, virally, and visually."

The biggest lesson here is this: Routers aren't sexy. If Cisco can make a router exciting enough for social media, you too can utilize social media to create a buzz about your product or service.

[more]

TRAPEZE NETWORKS DEPLOYS CHINA’S LARGEST WI-FI NETWORK

6,500,000 Citizens Surf NonStop Wireless Network

Beijing, China, September 29, 2008 -- Trapeze Networks, a Belden brand, has won the Hangzhou Wi-Fi Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) project, the largest Wi-Fi MAN in China.  Trapeze Networks is deploying more than 3,000 access points in Hangzhou, allowing the city’s 6.5 million residents to enjoy the convenience and reliability of NonStop Wireless™ networking.

I tried to resist...

... blogging this bit of brilliance, but have succumbed.   So, in case you haven't read it yet...

So, in case you don't know the back story, Maureen Dowd once "dated" Aaron Sorkin.  Last week, Ms. Dowd asked Mr. Sorkin to write the dialogue between Mr. Barak Obama and President Jed Bartlet.  (Isn't this more than just a little bit like fanfic?)  Read on...

BARACK OBAMA knocks on the front door of a 300-year-old New Hampshire farmhouse while his Secret Service detail waits in the driveway. The door opens and OBAMA is standing face to face with former President JED BARTLET.

BARTLET Senator.

OBAMA Mr. President.

BARTLET You seem startled.

OBAMA I didn’t expect you to answer the door yourself.

BARTLET I didn’t expect you to be getting beat by John McCain and a Lancôme rep who thinks “The Flintstones” was based on a true story, so let’s call it even.

OBAMA Yes, sir.

BARTLET Come on in.

BARTLET leads OBAMA into his study.

BARTLET That was a hell of a convention.

OBAMA Thank you, I was proud of it.

BARTLET I meant the Republicans. The Us versus Them-a-thon. As a Democrat I was surprised to learn that I don’t like small towns, God, people with jobs or America. I’ve been a little out of touch but is there a mandate that the vice president be skilled at field dressing a moose —

OBAMA Look —

BARTLET — and selling Air Force Two on eBay?

OBAMA Joke all you want, Mr. President, but it worked.

BARTLET Imagine my surprise. What can I do for you, kid?

OBAMA I’m interested in your advice.

BARTLET I can’t give it to you.

OBAMA Why not?

BARTLET I’m supporting McCain.

OBAMA Why?

BARTLET He’s promised to eradicate evil and that was always on my “to do” list.

[more]

Press Release: WICHITA WINGNUTS WELCOME WIRELESS

Consumers Crave Cashless Concessions

PLEASANTON, Calif., September 22, 2008 – Trapeze Networks is the MVP player on a team that has built the first cashless professional sports stadium in the United States, Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, home of the Wichita Wingnuts. Other members of this winning line-up include Total Venue Control, Game Time Food & Beverage Services, EZ Pay and Renaissance Network Solutions. Working together, these companies created a turnkey solution that makes everything about baseball in Wichita a lot more fun.

 

Infoworld, 9.19.8: Wireless LAN standard to cut power use

The upcoming 802.11v standard will lower power consumption in wireless LANs, according to Matthew Gast, principal engineer at Trapeze Networks.

Work on the standard began early in 2004 and ratification is currently scheduled for March 2010. Features include a Wireless Network Management Sleep Mode, improvement on base 802.11 power savings and longer power-off times for 802.11 radios.

[more]

Floyd Norris: Brilliant!

Floyd Norris is a business columnist for the NY Times and has a well-deserved reputation for being the sharpest pencil in the box.  In my professional life I've only had one encounter with him and, I'll tell you the truth, it's a heart-stopping moment for a public relations professional when he hears Floyd Norris is holding for you on line two.  In my case, I was working for 3Com at the time and we were in the process of spinning off Palm and had issued a tracking stock for the new company.  The tracking stock did Very Well, while the 3Com stock Wasn't Doing So Well.  In fact, the situation was that the valuation of the tracking stock compared to the performance of the 3Com stock indicated that 3Com was being valued less than the cash we had in the bank.  --And I hope that never happens to you. 

Our strategy was to hold our collective breaths and hope no one noticed and that worked out pretty well until one afternoon when I got the call from Floyd Norris.  The truth of the matter is that it was one of the easiest press inquiries I ever handled.  Mr. Norris asked me if he had done his math correctly and I affirmed he had.  Mr. Norris asked me what I thought about the situation and I told him that, on the record, we couldn't comment about the fairness of how the public values our stock.  Off the record, I told him I thought the situation was rather silly and he completely agreed with me and his column streeted on Saturday and the column said the situation was silly and that was that. 

In today's paper, Mr. Norris explains the Entire Economic Mess for us.  He explains it in simple terms that even I can understand.  I Highly Recommend that you read it. 

[more]

UPCOMING 802.11v WIRELESS STANDARD “GREENS UP” WLAN

Trapeze Networks Engineer Tells InterOp New York How

PLEASANTON, Calif., September 19, 2008 – The coming IEEE 802.11v standard will introduce new power savings features that will “green up” wireless LANs.  This important advance will be explained at the InterOp New York conference by Matthew Gast, Trapeze Networks' principal engineer, office of the CTO, and the chair of Wi-Fi Alliance Wireless Network Management and Security Technical task groups.

Regarding the 2.1 Firmware Upgrade from Apple....

My dear friend who knows Far More about consumer electronics than I do wrote to me about his experience updating his iPod Touch with the 2.1 firmware.  This is what he had to say:

• Has the new iTunes 'Genius Playlist' feature ON the touch
  
• Performance seems a bit faster overall
• Backs up with iTunes MUCH faster
  
• Gets POP mail (Comcast, Yahoo, etc) MUCH faster and reads some Yahoo Groups mail that comes to my Comcast account MUCH better than before (sometimes used to show mail but not download the content)
  
• The LOCATION circle of where I am seems to be smaller and better positioned. I THINK they've improved the wi-fi accuracy quite a bit
  

I hope the iPhone fixes are as good as the touch ones appear to be!"

My own experience with the upgrade was very satisfactory.  My heart is always in my throat whenever I do a firmware upgrade of any kind due to my history of bricking gadgets of every stripe during similar operations.  (Nothing resembles a brick more than a bricked Newton.)  Anyhoo, after I worked through the usual panic attack, my iPhone surfaced quite nicely and, I guess, is running better.  Honestly, I don't notice much difference. 

I haven't written to you about my iPhone so I'll share these thoughts with you now:

1.  The UI is like ... something very sweet and delicious and probably bad for you.  Apple is without a peer when it comes to UI and the iPhone is spectacular.

2.  The apps ... while I liked the free market economy of Palm apps, I deeply respect how Apple is bringing the apps to users.  If I were a developer, I would be Very Grateful that Apple went out of its way to build this infrastructure. 

3.  Battery.  I've read various dings on the battery life, but my experience is this:  Because I use the phone so much more than an "ordinary" cell phone, the battery takes a bit of a hit.  What's really being described as dings on battery life are symptoms of how bloody useful the iPhone is.  I've installed fifty-one apps to my iPhone and I really do use most of them at least once a day.  eReader is a Very Strong eBook application.  Facebook is a great interface and I would argue better than the one on my screen.  I have my iPhone activesyncing with my company's Exchange server and gMail is onboard through IMAP.  (Please don't use POP for gMail because you deserve better than that and IMAP is just as easy to set up.)    This is my first location-based appliance and it has already saved my biscuits from burning on more than one occassion.  --So, yeah, I'm using it A Lot more than my previous cell phone.  Battery hit?  No surprise. 

4.  More about the apps.  I really appreciate the fact that Apple has extended itself to content people so that they can present their web-based apps so conveniently on the iPhone.  Remember The Milk is swell on the iPhone.  LinkedIn really works great on the iPhone and I'm sure both of these "applications" for the iPhone (really just a different html frontend) was easy to develop.  Good work here.   

5.  And I want more.  I'm impatient when I find something that hasn't be customized for my iPhone.  I want someone to write a frontend to LiveJournal Righ Now so I can more easily keep up with my friends there.   I want Wells Fargo to make it just a little bit easier for me to bank over my iPhone (as long as there isn't a trade off with security).  And I'd like some more device-to-device appls like I had on my Palm that lets me share things more easily with other iPhones.  (But suspect that DRM worries prevent this.)  And I want a ton of peer-to-peer Wi-Fi enabled location-based apps that I can't even imagine right now but fully anticipate some Smart Young Thing is already hard at work on.   

I took my time moving from the Treo to the iPhone and I'm glad I waited for the 3G to arrive before I got in line.  And I'm very glad I didn't wait  any longer.  Very Pleased. 

LEADING INDUSTRY ANALYST SAYS HEALTHCARE, RETAIL AND MANUFACTURING BENEFIT FROM VOICE OVER WIRELESS NETWORKS

Trapeze Networks Webcast Stresses Importance
Of Coverage, Density, Resiliency and Performance

 

PLEASANTON, Calif., September 15, 2008 – Trapeze Networks is hosting a webcast featuring Michael J. King, a research director at Gartner, an industry analyst firm. King presents his new findings in a webcast entitled Deployment Considerations for Voice over Wireless LANs. Trapeze Networks, a leader in wireless networking, and Polycom, a leader in collaborative applications for voice, video and data, is hosting the webcast and making it available to everyone interested in wireless voice services for their organizations. The webcast can be viewed here.

 

“Trapeze Networks is uniquely positioned to help companies get the benefits of wireless voice,” said Ahmet Tuncay, executive vice president of product management and business development. “Nonstop Wireless Networking differentiates Trapeze Networks from all its competitors. Most data applications don’t mind bits that arrive late or out of sequence as long as they all arrive at their destination sooner or later. But voice applications, and for that matter video too, demand that the signal be transmitted without interruption and Trapeze Networks does that better than any other WLAN company.”

 

Since its introduction earlier this year, Trapeze Networks has earned praise from the media and industry analysts for Nonstop Wireless. Network World, the leading trade magazine for the data networking marketplace, named Trapeze Networks a “blue ribbon winner” for its 802.11n product line. Trapeze Networks’ Nonstop Wireless networking was singled out from every other WLAN vendor for its high-availability architecture.

 

The Network World article reported on the findings of recent research performed by ABI Research. In its report, ABI Research wrote this:

 

Trapeze edges out its competitors with respect to resilience and high availability. The company’s “Non-Stop Wireless” is more than a slogan. Its use of virtual cluster controller functionality is highly innovative. Each controller contributes capacity resources to a community of controllers; and that means no impact on sessions should a controller go down. It also means that content is balanced automatically if a controller ceases operation.

 

In addition to the accolades Trapeze Networks has received from ABI Research, Current Analysis wrote this:

 

Customers of other WLAN vendors should consider Trapeze when looking to upgrade the existing WLAN. …Trapeze pulls out all the stops for its NonStop Wireless strategy.

 

About Trapeze Networks

Trapeze Networks, a Belden brand, is a leading provider of enterprise wireless LAN equipment and management software. Trapeze was the first company to introduce NonStop Wireless - delivering unmatched reliability to the enterprise wireless LAN and its solutions are optimized for companies requiring mobility and high bandwidth such as healthcare, education, and hospitality. Trapeze delivers Smart Mobile™ providing scalable wireless LANs for applications such as Voice over Wi-Fi, location services, and indoor/outdoor connectivity.

 

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The Guardian, 9.6.8: You can't help being what you write

After 40 years, the problem remains, each time. You can't start writing until you know what you're doing, and you don't know what you're doing until you start writing. I still have to resist the false intuition that I need to know as much as possible in advance. The essential thing is to know as little as possible. Ideally, when things fall out well, you shouldn't feel clever, you should feel lucky.

Highly recommended. 

[more]

Ambient Awareness: Get It.

The New York Times holds a special spot on the menu of my media diet.  It occupies the type of media that I read because it is what it is.  It has a topology that turns inward on itself but nevertheless reaches out and illuminates Other Things.  I enjoy reading the NY Times, and I'm also obliged to read the NYTimes as it is essential to whatever it is that I do.  But I never really turn the pages expecting to be Profoundly Enlightened about the new worlds of technology / society where I go spelunking.   This past Sunday, September 7, was different. 

Mr. Clive Thompson has discovered another country and showed us part of a map.  It isn't so much that he discovered that more of us are keeping up with more of us in novel ways.  Thousands of people on LiveJournal knew this ages ago.  Rather, Mr. Thompson gives us a latitude and longitude, the coordinates of the place.  Many years back, William Gibson defined virtual reality as where one is when one is speaking to someone else on the telephone and this is surely the truth.  Mr. Thompson gives us ambient awareness, the particular knowing we have of individuals, near and far, we arrive at through the glimpses we receive through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.  --Thank you. 

I strongly suggest you read the article.  It starts off a bit slow, but ride it out. 

This is getting freakish

Just received another email from Hillary and it sets my mind to work trying to remember why my relationship with Hillary is beginning to feel so familiar.  And then it all comes back...

The summer between my sophomore and junior year.  I'm going to summer school, as usual because who really wants to spend the summer at home in Arkansas.  I've got a good part-time tutoring gig with the athletic department, a stool at the local bar and a cue behind the counter at the pool hall.  I'm taking some graduate level English classes and living off campus in a wonderful derelict house across the street from the food co-op.  Life is good.

I spot someone in one of my classes and she's very quiet and very cute and I like that type.  One thing leads to another and we go out to see Heaven's Gate and then have a cocktail and it becomes very clear very quickly that she's as crazy as a loon -- and this is a permanent condition and not just a bad reaction to Michael Cimino's movie masterpiece.  A year earlier, insanity wouldn't have dissuaded me or dampened my affections.  There were periods of my life when I thought madness was kind of charming, but by this stage in my life I've come to grips with the fact that it is Very Unproductive so at the end of our evening together I've decided it's been an ok evening (I liked the movie) and our lives would continue headed in different directions.

Except they didn't. 

Of course she was in one of my classes so I couldn't exactly avoid her especially when she decided to sit next to me.  Then there were the casual invitations to head over to Bradey Commons after class to enjoy the air conditioning and study together and that seemed rather innocent, but I could tell that, through her madness, she didn't see it that way and I could feel myself being inexorably pulled ever deeper into her vortex.  --But we never went out on another date, I swear. 

She started popping by the house after shopping at the co-op.  Then, she started appearing there empty-handed of an excuse altogether.  I did the right thing and told her that we really weren't "seeing" each other and she seemed surprised by that.  She didn't take it well.  Neither did her room mate, who called me up to let me know this.  Neither did her mother back in Maryland.

So, now I'm still getting these emails from Hillary and from Maggie Williams and from Chelsea and I want to tell them, "Look:  we're just friends, ok?  I need some space to breathe."

Sometimes, late at night, I wake up convinced I've heard someone in the driveway and I picture her, after the bar's closed with a stomach full of bitterness.  She's standing in my front yard staring up at my window, thinking about how I'm probably going to vote for Obama and feeling fury rising in her throat. 

I never should have shown any interest, but it's too late now.

Press Release: TRAPEZE ENGINEER LEADING TWO IMPORTANT WIFI ALLIANCE TASK GROUPS

The Wi-Fi Alliance, the global, non-profit industry association, has selected Matthew Gast, a Trapeze executive, to chair two new, very important task groups. Gast will chair the Wireless Network Management Marketing and Security Technical task groups.

[more]

Press Release: LEADING WORLDWIDE SUPPLIER OF PATIENT MONITORING TECHNOLOGY TURNS TO TRAPEZE NETWORKS FOR NONSTOP WIRELESS

Dräger Medical Certifies Trapeze Networks Products Interoperable

PLEASANTON, Calif., August 4, 2008 – Dräger Medical, an international leader in the fields of medical and safety, has certified interoperability between Dräger’s line of Infinity patient monitoring equipment and Trapeze Networks’ line of NonStop Wireless networking.

In Dräger’s notice of certification, Lars Roth of Dräger’s Monitoring Systems and IT group, wrote, “Due to the critical nature of medical devices, Dräger Medical tests and verifies network hardware components used for communication between medical system devices. These tests include proper IP Multicast handling, wireless roaming, wireless encryption and load testing. In addition, tests with competing traffic are run in order to understand and detect the proper Quality of Service settings. These are the key parameters that will ensure that in a shared Infinity OneNet installation, the data flow of the Dräger patient monitors is being prioritized over non-patient monitor data.”

“People kick around the words ‘mission-critical’ until the expression is meaningless,” said Ahmet Tuncay, executive vice president of product management and business development at Trapeze Networks. “For Dräger, mission-critical means monitoring patients in the ER, ICU, OR, and everywhere in between. Dräger has pioneered mobile patient monitoring and is turning to the leader in NonStop Wireless, Trapeze Networks, for wireless infrastructure. --That’s mission critical.”

[more]

TechTarget, Belden-Trapeze acquisition: Partners say so far so good

This story ended up with some very interesting competitive spins to it.  Some hard work and some great relationships brought everything together quite nicely.  Very pleased with the story.

By Rivka Gewirtz Little, Senior News Writer

Last week cabling company Belden Inc. completed its acquisition of Trapeze Networks for $133 million, and executives say the wireless LAN company's 200-plus partner channel will remain intact and supported.

"Our partners are pretty excited about this," said Jim Vogt, president of Trapeze, adding that the company will function independently, continue to use its own name and look to further expand the channel.

Because it is so difficult for an independent company to survive in the hotly competitive wireless LAN market, Trapeze partners appear to believe that the acquisition by Belden, a publicly traded company, will strengthen Trapeze's position and give it global reach. A string of small wireless LAN companies have been acquired in recent years.

"This is going to solidify Trapeze and give them the financial backing to continue on in the future," said Dick Stayner, major accounts manager at Valcom, a Trapeze partner in Salt Lake City.

Trapeze can't promise that there won't be channel conflict, since at least a portion of Belden's channel, which dwarfs Trapeze's, will eventually be able to sell the wireless product.

Initially, though, Trapeze partners are likely to see new opportunities, because many Belden partners are not yet trained in wireless technology and can't sell the wireless product until they are. In those situations Trapeze partners will be brought in on Belden deals, Vogt said.

"Now we can put our sales force behind them and go after larger accounts," Vogt said. Belden partners often serve large businesses that could have both wired and wireless networks, or have wireless systems that need extensive behind-the-scenes cabling.

However, it is unclear how Belden partners will take to bringing in Trapeze partners.

"Everybody will want to sell Trapeze and they'll wonder why we're bringing in [our own channel]," Vogt said. "So there will be some conflict there." But he added that there will be "some reward" for taking Trapeze partners into accounts.

A formal award or incentive system hasn't been finalized yet, and the companies are banging out the rules of engagement. Those guidelines must emerge quickly since eventually Belden partners will be trained and may try to cut out Trapeze partners, resulting in channel conflict.

"What the Belden guys are doing now is sorting out where the interest is in the Belden channel, figuring out who would like to step up and extend their business with this offering and whether they have the propensity to do it. Then we are going to have to map our channel list and say, 'Here are my channels by region, and here are yours," Vogt said. He added that it will be like putting the "decoder ring together."

Beyond concerns about channel conflict, partners also hope the Belden acquisition won't change Trapeze's partner-friendly attitude.

Cliff Arellano, president of Trapeze partner Communications Products Inc. (CPI) in Indianapolis, said his company used to work with wireless LAN company Airespace, which was later acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. CPI started working with Cisco but didn't find the super-vendor to be "really partner-friendly," so it switched to Trapeze. CPI has a rosier outlook on the Belden deal since it is already a Belden partner too. Nevertheless, Arellano said he hopes Belden sticks to its word that it will be friendly toward Trapeze partners.

"Belden seems to get the picture, whereas Cisco didn't appear to care," Arellano said.

In the meantime, CPI is testing products from Ruckus Wireless and may eventually incorporate some Ruckus technology into its offering.

Ruckus launched an incentive program to poach unhappy Trapeze partners once the Belden deal was announced. Ruckus marketing vice president David Callisch said the incentive program has drawn new partners, and he gave two examples. CPI was the only Trapeze partner contacted by press time that showed any interest in Ruckus, and Arellano stressed that CPI is moving very slowly with Ruckus and is fully committed to Trapeze.

Arellano said the company "had been stuck once before" with small vendors like Ruckus that were later acquired and weren't the same for partners. Now that Trapeze has been purchased by Belden, he said, it is definitely stable.

[link to original story]

      

Things I Like...

Music.  Doesn't everyone?  I've survivied the roller coaster rides of different formats and has been fairly successful getting what I really want into a digital format that's almost convenient.  There have been hard disk failures, some dead end streets, and etc., but, overall, I'm doing ok. 

What I've come to praise today is a service that does what it's promises and promises something that you might want.

MP3Tunes makes a simple proposition and does a lot of heavy lifting in the background.  Install a little app next to your music files and open an account.  The app will automatically copy all of your music up to MP3Tuness server for safe keeping.  But, while your files are there, would you like them cleaned and washed, retagged, re-collated into the correct album play order, re-titlte with the right title, etc.  Very nice feature.  Then, of course, all those fixes become synched to your local files. 

Perhaps your in your office and you don'thave your iPod or the particular album you have a yen to hear isn't synched to your iPod.  No problem.  Log on to MP3Tunes and open up it's player (which is a dead ringer for iTunes), find your tracks and rock on. 

Maybe you want to have your music files at work as well as at home.  No problem.  Install the little app leave it on over the weekend and , voila.  All your music is there on Monday morning. 

I'm very happy with the service and highly recommend it. 

TRAPEZE NETWORKS INTRODUCES SMARTPASS 7.0: INTELLIGENT ACCESS CONTROL FOR WIRELESS LANS

PLEASANTON, Calif., June 26, 2008 – Today, Trapeze Networks introduces SmartPass™ 7.0, the access management platform for Trapeze NonStop Wireless™ networking products. SmartPass 7.0 gives network managers precise control over every dimension of the who, what, where, when, why and how of access management. With SmartPass 7.0, network managers have more control over wireless network access than they typically have for the wired network. Network managers can easily control access based on location, traffic, and time-of-day policies.

“SmartPass 7.0 marks an important advancement in access control and how it must be integrated with business applications,” said Ahmet Tuncay, vice president of product management and marketing. “SmartPass is now a standards-based platform combining user authentication, device integrity checking, and dynamic access control with open interfaces for third-party development, a first of its kind in the wireless LAN industry.”

Today, SmartPass can accept the following plug-ins:

- Advanced Access Control
- Location-Based Authentication
- RADIUS-based Monitoring and Reporting
- Guest Access

Trapeze Networks has published the application programming interfaces for SmartPass so an enterprise can write its own plug-in and control its wireless network with precision.

Advanced Access Control
SmartPass installs quickly and immediately begins to protect the integrity of the production network. With the Advanced Access Control plug-in, the network administrator using SmartPass can set access based on location, time of day, identity of user, SSID, VLAN, and / or accounting data. It is based on the RFC 3576 standard and has the ability to change authorization attributes during active sessions.

One example application of Advanced Access Control is in an education setting where for any given student, after 10 MB of downloads one session, the user is moved down from full access to the lowest priority queue, perhaps 100 Kbps maximum. This way, every student has a chance to benefit from high-speed access.

Location, Location, Location
SmartPass 7.0, with the Location-based Authentication / Access Control plug-in, works with the Trapeze Networks Location Appliance to provide location-based services and add location information to accounting data. Network managers can set rules to permit or restrict access, allocate bandwidth and allow resources all based on location. This is a feature unique to Trapeze Networks.
In a school, for instance, a professor is giving a test from 2:00p to 3:00p in Classroom 230. She has the ability to change wireless access for students instantly to deny access to the internet during that time and at that location. If the professor chooses, students can still have access to relevant classroom materials on the local area network.

Plays Well With Others
SmartPass works hand-in-glove with Trapeze Networks’ LA-200 Location Appliance. SmartPass also works seamlessly with Trapeze Networks’ RingMaster, the company’s wireless network management suite, its access points and wireless controllers. All these components come together to deliver NonStop Wireless for the Always-on Enterprise.

No man is an island and no network application should be forced to work independently of all the others. That’s why when Trapeze Networks engineered SmartPass, it made the platform plug and play with Cisco’s NAC (Network Admission Control), Microsoft’s NAP (Network Access Protection), and the TCG (Trusted Computing Group).

SmartPass maintains per user statistics, lifetime session counts, traffic details, and total traffic passed for a user session or specific device. All together, this means that SmartPass 7.0 cooperates and complements existing network tools by giving managers unique views and reports on all aspects of wireless usage and traffic patterns relating to time of day and location. This information can be used to make decisions about adjusting the capacity of the network by adding more access points to relieve congested areas.

Be Our Guest
Today, it’s expected to allow guests to have wireless access, but too many enterprises give too much away to too many. And the new generation of wireless-enabled sub-notebooks, iPhones, gaming and music devices makes a bad situation worse.

With SmartPass, the guest access operator is completely shielded from the WLAN controllers and network management tools so mistakes can’t be made. When guest accounts are created, they are automatically purged after a pre-determined time, such as the end of a work day, and can be changed in mid-session. SmartPass can be used to handle a couple of guests in a conference room or 1,000 people in a convention center. Either way, every guest can do their own work and only their own work.

Easy to Use, Easy to Buy
Through September 30, 2008, Trapeze Networks customers can upgrade to a SmartPass 7.0 base license for $295, a $300 savings. For more information on this promotion, see the Trapeze website (www.trapezenetworks.com) or one of its many channel partners.

About Trapeze Networks
Trapeze Networks is a leading provider of enterprise wireless LAN equipment and management software. Trapeze was the first company to introduce NonStop Wireless – delivering unmatched reliability to the enterprise wireless LAN. Its solutions are optimized for companies requiring mobility and high bandwidth such as healthcare, education, and hospitality. Trapeze delivers Smart Mobile™— providing scalable wireless LANs for applications such as Voice over Wi-Fi, location services, and indoor/outdoor connectivity.

# # #

The Carnegie Library.

I grew up in the Carnegie Library in Fort Smith.  Now, it's the Fort Smith Library.

I remember the wooden floors, the enormous wooden rails on the stairs leading up to the children's room, and the fact that it was so convient that the Dr. Seuss books were shelved so that I could easily reach them.  My favorite was his first book, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulbury Street.  My second favorite book was his second, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.  I regarded the Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, and its successors as the author lowering his sights and playing to the crowd.  My library card was pale blue with rounded corners and there was a metal tag affixed to it.   I can remember exactly how the library smelled. 

Books also give off special smells. According to a recent survey of French students, 43 percent consider smell to be one of the most important qualities of printed books—so important that they resist buying odorless electronic books. CaféScribe, a French on-line publisher, is trying to counteract that reaction by giving its customers a sticker that will give off a fusty, bookish smell when it is attached to their computers.

From The Lbrary in the New Age, The New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 10, June 12, 2008

The Carnegie Library in Fort Smith was one of four libraries endowed by Carnegie in Arkansas.  The four Carnegie Libraries in Arkansas pale in comparison to the the 165 Carnegie Libraries in Indiana. 

And in 1919, when the last grant was given, more than half (1,689) libraries in the U.S. were Carnegie Libraries. In all, Carnegie endowed 2,509 libraries around the world. 

Carnegie Libraries advanced the innovation of open stacks, shelved books open to the public, something we all take for granted now.  Imagine. 

Andrew Carnegie was a wicked man in many respects, but I can't help but second the person who called him the patron saint of the library.  I would not be me, if it weren't for the Carnegie Library and the Fort Smith Public Library.  It's impossible for me to calculate how many hours, days I spent there.  For my mother, it was a combination of childcare and a priceless gift that created ... me. 

In New York, the first place I lived was the Harvard Club which is, basically, a library.  It was all leather and cozy and that summer tasted like Tom Collins.  The New York Public Library had a system whereby the copy machines worked when a special token was inserted in it, a token the library sold.  I discovered, by accident, that the token was identical to a subway token in every respect except for it's price which was fifteen cents less and I arbitraged that spread to pay for my newspapers and magazines and coffee.

Now, in my wallet I only keep three cards:  My Amex, bank card, insurance card and my Library card and I keep the library card so that its covers the others and it is the first thing someone sees when I open my wallet.

In San Francisco, the metropolitan center I live next to, it took me some years before I discovered The Mechanic's Institute Library, a private library I joined about four years ago.  Professionally, I was in need of something like a office pied-a-terre, someplace quiet where I could cool my heels, perhaps do some work, and maybe even use for meetings.  Hotel lobbies are sometimes good for this and I've used many fine hotel lobbies in my time, but there's something about San Francisco hotel lobbies that don't especially strike me as welcoming or conducive to day-long sitdowns the way many NYC hotel lobbies are.  Coffee shops are far to noisy, and the rent on a chair measured in vente lattes is neither healthy for my physical or financial self.  I was familiar with the idea of private libraries and was glad of heart when I discovered The Mechanic's Institute Library as it is Very Affordable, centrally located, chock-ful of character, has requisite technological conveniences and is quite lovely to lounge around in.  I've taken the family there for some of the events hosted there and almost joined the Proust Society that meets there every month (but declined as I had finished my marathon and, frankly, needed to put that obsession behind me for a while).  The oldest chess club is affiliated with the library and meets in rooms that are consecutive from the library and the players there add even more color to the library.  I keep my library card to Mechanic's Institute Library in my back-up wallet in my bag.   Everyone  reading this who lives in  or  near San Francisco should subscribe to and support the library.   

Finally (and I almost forgot this), I've embarked on a project for my synagogue's library.  As the library is without a set of Talmud, and as Talmud is almost essential to the deep study of Torah, I've launched a fundraiser to acquire a set of the "Oral Torah" and perhaps even contract with student librarian to help our library along a bit.

And this is all true.

According to Craig Mathias, Farpoint Research....

Belden Snags Trapeze - Expansion, Not Consolidation

This looks to me like a marriage made in heaven, or at least as
close as one can get to that delightful, if theoretical, concept.
Belden has a huge following, name recognition, a channel, and great
wired products. Trapeze has a very competitive wireless LAN system. I
think that this acquisition is very clear evidence of the importance of
wireless LANs, unified networking, and the very significant growth
prospects ahead for both.

[more]

Oversharing.

Charmed.

My instruments alerted me to a story that will appear in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine entitled Exposed.  (I can remember how, when I worked in the halls of book publisher, we would receive parts of the Sunday paper mid-week, all fresh smelling and glistening with the dew that the cognoscente would discuss over afternoon cocktails in cool, dark lounges.)

Bethatasitmay, I received the alert that the New York Sunday Times magazine will feature a story by one Ms. Emily Gould.  Ms Gould's reputation precedes her and then there was this rather ... humid ... photo illustration.

So I arrived at the article prepared to cringe at yet another amazed and naive account of Life On The Internet Thing As Understood  By The New York Times, that would set back the Our Cause by another year. (Internet?  Hmpf.  People with tattoos and STDs chattering about absolutely any random thing that occurs to them. Hmpf.  You can't be serious.)  I heard myself saying, "I've invested twenty years into this internet thing and we're right back to Big Brother and MySpace and internet = wasteland.  Damn. 

But then I read the article and was absolutely charmed.  This is the first time that I can remember that The New York Times has run a story where the internet is a part of the story but not the novelty of the story or the morale of the story or the glittering brand-new toy of the story.  Here are some parts I liked: 

Emily writes ...

When, at age 24, she decided to move to New York, she had two career options: Columbia Journalism School or Gawker. She chose Gawker. Two years later, every magazine editor in town knew her name, and she was hired as the online editor of Vanity Fair. Maybe the days were over when young comers were slowly mentored as they prepared to assume their bosses’ titles, covering community-board meetings or fetching coffee.

Indeed.  Don't forget the cream and extra sugar.  Emily does an excellent job of capturing the climate and choices of New York media, the juxtaposition of cardboard coffee cups and sitting next to Anna Wintour. 

Then, Emily describes what it's like to be an online celebrity.  For me the sub head captures it whole:  "Famous for 15 People."  This is something I've observed with great interest during the past couple of decades:  How celebrity manifests itself in the online world.  There, we can find almost affinity groups circling around almost anything or anybody.  I have watched, in rapt fascination, the rise and fall of many people on Live Journal, and antecedents like the Well and elsewhere who are famous because... and that's the most fascinating part of all.

They are famous because they are maestros of the medium and it is this specific talent that propels them.

I can cite two very different examples and experiences.  On Live Journal, I am a "friend" of someone  who I've never met in real life.  I read her journal , listen to her telephone posts, and follow her through her life step-by-step because she pretty much chronicles her life in that much detail. 

So, at first, I'm self-conscious about this as it made me feel like some sort of voyeur.  Afterall, what is my real connection with this person?  And then I noticed that she made me think about things in a new way and that I would take things from her and use them in my own life.  And feel good  about it.  I am informed, entertained and educated.  So what is this experience?

I had a very different experience involving someone who wasn't there.  Again, on Live Journal, I began to observe someone who was presented with Great Challenges in her life.  Her story unspooled over more than a year.  There were spiritual, mental and physical setbacks that culminated in what appeared to be an attempted suicide.  And I had a moment, like that we might have experienced in reading fiction, when one becomes aware that there is a story-teller telling a story about the story-teller.  Such like:  And then the whale rammed our ship and we all died.  I realized that I had become enmeshed in a work of fiction that, in technique, was no different from Bram Stoker's famous work. 

Jonathan Harker's Journal

3 May. Bistritz. __Left Munich at 8:35 P.  M, on 1st  May, arriving at Vienna early next morning;  should  have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place,  from the glimpse which I got of it  from  the train and the little I could walk  through  the streets.   I feared to go very far from the station,  as we  had  arrived late and would start as near the correct time  as  possible.

We will read this text and become involved in it and then at some point we might become self-conscious of the fact that the author of this diary ... wait, it isn't really a diary, it's a work of fiction akin to the epistolatory novels of, say, Samual Richardson (see Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady a memoir [of course Don Quixote and, my personal favorite, Tristram Shandy (Norton Critical Editions)].  (And do consider the Norton as these editions uniformly have the best notes, essays, illustrations and annotations.) 

Basically, what I'm reaching for here is that Ms. Gould tarries exactly on the cusp of our life / our fiction and the porosity of the  boundary between them.  And she accurately captures the results of actually becoming the protagonist of your own life. 

Kudos, Ms. Gould, and thanks for oversharing.

 

Current Analysis, April 24, 2008

Trapeze Pulls Out All the Stops for Its “NonStop Wireless” Strategy

• Customers with greenfield opportunities should consider Trapeze when selecting a wireless vendor, especially if there is a need to scale the WLAN to a very large number of APs. In addition, customers in this situation should consider using 802.11n at the onset, rather than older ABG technologies.

            

• Existing Trapeze customers should consider the new controller and software in this announcement when planning upgrades to their WLAN environment. Trapeze has significantly changed the capabilities in its offerings, especially when it comes to scaling the WLAN environment. Customers should consider the new capabilities when planning for the next year.

            

• Customers of other WLAN vendors should consider Trapeze when looking to upgrade the existing WLAN. Trapeze has made significant improvements that may outstrip the current WLAN vendor.

[more]

EdTech, May 2008: Completely Unplugged.

Completely Unplugged

The University of Minnesota is set to deploy the world’s largest 802.11n wireless network.

When University of Minnesota students return for classes this fall, they’ll discover a whole new meaning for the term “academic freedom.” That’s because for the firstrt time, they’ll have a chance to connect to the school’s new campuswide wireless network, which, thanks to its adherence to the latest 802.11 Wi-Fi standard, will allow them access to electronic resources via ultra-high-speed, seamless and reliable connections from just about anywhere on the Twin Cities campus.

When it’s fully implemented in the next few years, the new 802.11n wireless network will be the world’s largest, with approximately 9,500 access points deployed over 300 buildings and large communal areas on the school’s 1,204-acre campus in St. Paul and along the east and west banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.

The network, which will take five years and an estimated $15 million to build out across the entire campus, relies on state-of-the-art products from Trapeze Networks.

[more]

I Want You to Want Me

This is very, very interesting and gives me hope about what we can do with this internet.

What elephant? I didn't see an elephant.

Don't get me wrong. I love the career I've chosen. It's just sometimes I find that my colleagues are doing our profession a disservice. Take for example this week's issue of PR Week (yes, I'm a subscriber). The April 11 issue features a roundtable in San Francisco / Silicon Valley and around the table sit some of the leading lights hereabouts.

One question posed to this august group was, "So, what about the recession?" Everyone at the table, save one voice, replied, "What recession? There's a recession? I don't see a recession." The lone dissenter was Mr. Paul Bergevin, formerly of IBM and Cunningham and currently enriching the public image @ Intel. Mr. Bergevin noticed that the last time the economy went through a mild recession, there were heavy casualties in technology media.

Okay. If I were the president or MD at an agency, or the VP of Corp Comm at a company with a market cap larger than most countries in South America, I might not want to let on that the heavy rains of the economy were puddling in my front yard. Nevertheless, ... please. How credible is it for these folks who do more revolutions per minute than a carousel at Coney Island to turn away from what is blindingly obvious to most of us, even President Bush, for crying out loud.

I don't usually get worked up about what my peers say or think, but it just so happens that I know more than a couple of the people around that table and I know they are smarter, better still, wiser than this. It hurts all of our credibility when a group of very bright people don't admit there's an elephant in the room.

Auntie Pays a Vist. Amused by what she sees.

It's been Some Time, since I arrived on the Left Coast, having relented (or succumbed) to irresistible gravinomic forces, that maelstrom known as Silicon Valley.  Ne