Nortel Enhances Wireless LAN
Nortel today unveiled new wireless LAN (WLAN) capabilities and solutions that enable business to use their existing WLAN network to deploy advanced enterprise applications such as location tracking, advanced security solutions, and voice over the WLAN network
With new voice quality features based on IEEE 802.11e standards, businesses now have greater flexibility when planning for voice over WLAN as part of a unified communications solution. Additionally, Nortel has launched two simple and cost-effective upgrades to help increase the security of wireless LAN networks, and help improve overall productivity by allowing businesses to use the network to quickly locate people, company assets and equipment that are dispersed across their campus.
“As more of our employees become connected to our wireless LAN network, mobile PCs, notebooks and PDAs will increasingly be relied on as voice devices,” said Cary Houck, senior network engineer, ProMedica Health System which serves northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan in the United States. “By using the enterprise wireless LAN to support high-quality voice calls, Nortel’s WLAN solution will help ensure the benefits of unified communications can follow employees across our campus.”
The new voice capabilities on the Nortel Wireless LAN 2300 Series will ensure that voice quality is maintained in the presence of other wireless traffic and will allow customers to optimize the performance of a wide variety of mobile devices that will also be adopting the standard. This includes the new Nortel WLAN Handset 6100 Series, planned for availability in 2Q07. These premise-based WLAN handsets are planned to fully integrate with Nortel’s enterprise VoIP and WLAN platforms and provide the flexibility of 802.11 a/b/g support.
The two new solutions introduced on the Nortel Wireless LAN 2300 platform allow businesses to layer new business applications over their existing wireless LAN based on their unique requirements.
Nortel’s new Asset Tracking and Management solution enables businesses to use their WLAN network to provide real-time location and tracking of up to 10,000 individual assets or people with a location accuracy of one to three meters. The solution combines the Nortel WLAN 2300 Series with Ekahau real-time location system, enabling the use of RF tags that determine their location by interacting with Nortel WLAN 2300 Series access points. This eliminates the need to create a discrete network of RFID readers used solely for asset tracking purposes, resulting in a faster, simpler, and more cost-effective deployment.
Nortel’s new Wireless Intrusion Detection and Prevention (WIPS) solution gives customers an optional advanced WIPS security upgrade. By allowing the enterprise to leverage their existing Nortel WLAN infrastructure, Nortel eliminates the cost and complexity of installing and managing a separate network of security sensors. The solution uses WIPS technology from AirDefense to allow Nortel WLAN customers to turn WLAN 2300 Series access points into security sensors that can identify and protect the enterprise network against over 230 different types of threats that can target the wireless network. The solution also provides security policy management and enforcement, and scales from a single office to hundreds of locations.
“Nortel is creating valuable new applications that enterprises can very easily deploy using their Nortel wireless LAN networks,” said Aziz Khadbai, general manager, Converged Data Networks, Nortel. “Our work with AirDefense and Ekahau represents an infusion of their best-of-breed technology to extend the functionality of our enterprise mobility solutions with simple and economical advanced wireless LAN applications.”
AirDefense and Ekahau products have undergone rigorous testing, integration and market-readiness processes to assure resellers and customers of a seamless implementation with the WLAN 2300. The complete solutions are available today through Nortel and Nortel’s value-added resellers and integrators - Nortel.
