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]
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.
My favorite bit is the final paragraph of the article. Sweet.
Wi-Fi network maker Trapeze Networks has launched a pre-configured
appliance that can manage up to 5000 wireless access points or 1000
wireless switches - and won a giant contract for 802.11n Wi-Fi. The RingMaster-200 is a hardware version of Trapeze's RingMaster
network management software, and is pre-tuned to manage wireless LANs.
“Today, it’s common for enterprise Wi-Fi networks to include thousands
of access points cover hundreds of acres and span multiple sites," said
Ahmet Tuncay, Trapeze's marketing vice president.
Before this product, Trapeze's largest hardware device managed around
200 access points, while rival Aruba was ahead with its MMC-6000 which
can manage 2048 APs. Both companies use software to manage larger
installations, which has normally run on general purpose servers.
Aruba's recently purchased AirWave management platform uses software to
go up to 50,000 APs. Trapeze's appliance will make the process of
design and management simpler, says Trapeze, saving hundreds of IT
hours.
Ringmaster was central to Trapeze's recent success in winning what it
calls "the world’s largest deployment" of the new 802.11n standard, a
$15 million, five-year upgrade to the wireless LANs at the University
of Minnesota. The upgrade will include $3 million on access points
alone, swapping out existing APs from D-Link, Cisco and other vendors
for around 9,500 of Trapeze's 802.11n access points. Ringmaster
"…allowed us to quickly import our own CAD drawings and immediately
begin Wi-Fi planning for 300 buildings, including 1,300-plus floors,"
according to Steve Cawley, the university’s vice president of IT.
RingMaster has been a big part of Trapeze's WLAN strategy from the
beginning, for dealing with Wi-Fi propagation issues, and managing the
lifecycle of WLANs. The appliance can make a "virtual" site survey
based on architectural drawings, and configure access points for
specific locations before they are installed.
The appliance is based on a Linux OS, and has two redundant 250GB hard
drives to gather monitoring and performance data. The basic unit costs
$19,000 (£9,515) including a licence to support 250 APs, which can be
extended in steps of ten to 1000, up to 5000, if users buy software
keys.
Trapeze's claims - like most claims in the ever-competitive Wi-Fi
world - have already been disputed. Aruba told us that it already has
an appliance that manages 5000 APs, called the MM-200. We have been
unable to find this product on Aruba's site, however.
University Of Minnesota Plans Wi-Fi Network For 80,000
The installation will cover 1,204 acres across the university's two campuses and supercede a current network of scattered Wi-Fi access points.
By W. David Gardner
InformationWeek
March 10, 2008 04:21 PM
The University of Minnesota is preparing to roll out what it calls the "world's largest 802.11n deployment" at the Big Ten university's two campuses. The deployment, to get under way in May, eventually will serve 80,000 students and staff.
[more]
By Jeff Goldman
In a disaster recovery scenario, Wi-Fi can offer the perfect mix of flexibility and interoperability.
<snip>
Similarly, Trapeze Networks is using Wi-Fi for disaster response in schools—company director of product marketing David Cohen says an educational environment is perfect for that kind of deployment, since the same network that’s being used for student and faculty Internet access can support everything from video monitoring to emergency communications.
“To enable all the administrators, firemen, police captains, all those people, to communicate with each other on a wireless network, that is a tremendous resource,” he says.
To that end, Cohen says, it’s the interoperability that really makes Wi-Fi ideal in an emergency situation: any first responder with a Wi-Fi device can instantly access the network as needed.
“Wi-Fi uniquely offers one system with guaranteed interoperability,” Cohen says. “Everything just works together.”
Trapeze System Replaces Older Wi-Fi from Various Vendors
By Matt Hamblen
March 7, 2008 (Computerworld) Wi-Fi has become commonplace on
college campuses, but the University of Minnesota is embarking on a five-year
project to upgrade its Wi-Fi network to the much faster 802.11n standard. The
$15 million upgrade would provide about 9,500 access points, one of the largest
deployments to date.
The first phase of the project, to begin in May, involves
replacing 2,200 access points that have been in place for as long as nine
years. The access points from Cisco Systems Inc., D-Link Corp. and others will
be replaced with 802.11n APs from Trapeze Networks at a cost of about $3
million, said Louis Hammond, assistant director of networking and telecom at
the university, in an interview today.
Trapeze beat
23 other bids in a rigorous RFP process, and won because of cost and Trapeze's
ability to manage the overall Wi-Fi infrastructure centrally and in a secure
manner, Hammond said. A key factor was that Trapeze has a planning tool called
Ringmaster that allows the university to use computer-aided design drawings of
buildings to immediately begin planning where to locate the APs for maximum
coverage in 300 buildings with 1,300 floors, and serving 80,000 students,
faculty and staff.
"We're
trying to build a safer and more secure system, and the current Wi-Fi system is
open, so this one from Trapeze will lock it down," Hammond said.
Even though
802.11n is still in draft form, many vendors are selling products to the
existing draft specification. Hammond said the university was concerned about
deploying a draft N product, but decided to go with it because the hardware in
the standard is finalized and only the software might be changed. "If
there are changes, they will be in software," which would reduce the cost
and complexity of a change, Hammond said.
The
university has two campuses, in Minneapolis and St. Paul, covering 1,204 acres.
Faster 802.11n, with its longer range, could be useful in eventually supporting
real-time video and voice traffic, but will also help as the school prepares to
scan bar codes on tickets to football games in a new stadium opening in the
fall of 2009.
Hammond said
the more robust Wi-Fi system could be integrated in the future with WiMax
network applications, although he said it is unclear what those applications
might be. Trapeze said it could integrate with WiMax technology when it becomes
available, meeting one of the conditions of the RFP, Hammond said. "There
are still a lot of questions about WiMax," he said.
A 300 bed hospital will spend up to $300,000 on a Trapeze system, which is also sold by OEMs like Nortel and 3Com, or the competing Cisco gear. But this lets them give all clinicians these cool Vocera phones.
read more | digg story
Posted 9/26/2006
Silicon Valley journalists just got tougher — and for some, so has their job.
Revelations that investigators hired by Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) spied on reporters and stole their identities to get personal records all but guarantee the Silicon Valley icon will face a more skeptical press.
They also put at least nine reporters at four publications in the awkward position of figuring out how to cover a company that has wronged them personally.
Many questions arise. For example, should news outlets reassign reporters to ensure personal grudges don't taint coverage? Will reporters be a lot tougher?
"Each person is going to have to answer the questions for themselves," said Christine Tatum, a business editor at the Denver Post and president of the Society of Professional Journalists. "Could you continue to be objective and fair and accurate and balanced about a company that felt entitled to rifle through your private information? It's dicey."
Tatum says she doubts she could remain objective in such circumstances. But some publications might not want to remove an experienced reporter with the ability — proven dramatically in this case — to dig up information.
"As an editor, I would have to have a hard conversation with the reporter," she said.
The relationship between reporters and companies they cover is inevitably an uneasy one. But HP's actions, a first for a company its size, tread new ground.
'New Layer Of Skepticism'
"It's clear that HP has some fences to mend with the affected journalists, and it may be a while before they regain the trust of the media in general," said Jamie Diaferia, partner at Infinite Public Relations.
"Even if HP is the only company to have ever done something like this, other journalists have to at least wonder about their relationships with large public companies. It adds a new layer of skepticism to the process that may never disappear."
In a scandal bound to go down as a classic case study in journalism and PR textbooks, the tech giant dug up personal phone records on reporters and their families, had some followed, tried to send spyware to one and possibly dug through the trash of another.
At one point, HP's investigators considered getting jobs as cleaners and secretaries at two news outlets to make the spying easier.
"I pity the men and women coordinating HP's PR," said Michael Shmarak, a principal at Sidney Maxwell Public Relations. "Without question, this whole predicament is going to cause angst between the media and the company."
Still, he added, most journalists don't let personal feelings affect their work.
The HP probe targeted Dawn Kawamoto, Tom Krazit and Stephen Shankland of CNet's News.com; Pui-Wing Tam and George Anders of the Wall Street Journal; John Markoff of the New York Times; and Peter Burrows, Ben Elgin and Roger Crockett of BusinessWeek.
Kawamoto and Krazit wrote a few stories as the scandal broke Sept. 5. But once it became clear that during the probe HP had obtained their records, colleagues took over.
News.com's replacement reporters included Shankland, but his HP stories stopped after the online publication reported that the tech firm also targeted him.
Reporters Taken Off Story
Tam and Anders of the Wall Street Journal have not written about HP since the scandal broke.
While the New York Times' Markoff has not written a bylined story about HP since the scandal broke, he was credited for helping in the reporting process for a Sept. 22 piece about it.
The newspaper also quoted him in a Monday story about companies' efforts to plug leaks. Markoff, the victim of an e-mail hacker 10 years ago, said in that story that the tactics used by HP might be more common than most people assume.
BusinessWeek's Burrows wrote a Sept. 22 piece about HP's efforts to ferret out and fire workers caught speaking to the media. A tag line at the bottom of the story mentions Burrows' role as victim in the scandal.
(The BusinessWeek and CNet reporters didn't respond to e-mail questions, while the other two publications weren't contacted.)
Elizabeth Corcoran, a Forbes magazine reporter married to Anders, wrote about HP for a Sept. 22 first-person account about the ordeal.
For some, being revealed as one of HP's targets amounts to a badge of honor, a modern-day equivalent of being named to Richard Nixon's "enemies list."
Brian Johnson, a public relations consultant in Silicon Valley, said some journalists might not be too upset over the incident.
"Imagine what's going through the reporter's mind," Johnson said. " 'Gosh! My work is so important, HP and its executives are willing to risk their reputation to find my sources and methods.'
"That's very flattering indeed."
VegaStream, a privately-held maker of voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP)
gateways, could be a "good fit" for companies manufacturing session
border controllers, said Robert Brakeman, VegaStream's general manager of the
Americas. Brakeman explained that some session border controller vendors, such
as Juniper Networks in California and Acme Packet in Massachusetts, may find
themselves at a competitive disadvantage if they are unable to also offer
gateways - like VegaStream provides - at a time when giant Cisco Systems sells
both.
Gateways provide access from one network to another. Session border
controllers control signals over an Internet network.
Brakeman named Tellabs, whose core products are gateways, as another
potential VegaStream buyer.
Tomorrow, UK-based VegaStream will announce a USD 4m investment from venture
capitalists Noble Group. Brakeman said, however, that the cash infusion does
not dull VegaStream's interest in an exit. Brakeman declined to say whether
VegaStream has retained an investment bank.
He mentioned that VegaStream had received an offer from a private equity
firm since a management buyout three years ago, but the company would prefer a
buy from a strategic player. He said a return on investment alone held little
interest for VegaStream. The company would prefer a buyer that continued to
market its product.
VegaStream anticipates generating revenue of approximately USD 10m in 2006.
by Sarah Cohen
On September 23, 2006 Alibris organized a protest on the University of California - Berkeley campus against high textbook prices. Here's a small sample of the media coverage from the event:
