Trapeze distributes switching smarts

Wireless LANs today require data traffic to flow through the controller, which isn’t always necessary and can sometimes result in latency and jitter. Using Smart Mobile, according to the company, organizations can pick and choose on an app-by-app and user-by-user basis whether data needs to travel via the controller, or if the switching and encryption can be done at the AP level.

So, for example, were a guest to connect to your company WLAN, the traffic from his session could all go through the controller in a centralized fashion, making it more secure.

However, a low-latency application such as voice over WLAN (VoWLAN) might take the distributed AP-to-AP path, enabling them to communicate directly in a peer-to-peer fashion without requiring round trips to the central controller. With traffic flowing directly from handset to handset, VoWLAN deployments can scale dramatically, according to the company — not just for a few users, but for hundreds to thousands of users.

“Smart Mobile represents a fundamental shift in WLAN architectures,” said Dan Simone, VP and CTO at Trapeze Networks. “By distributing intelligence throughout the network while retaining centralized policy and management, Smart Mobile delivers the technological breakthrough enabling customers for the first time to deploy next-generation wireless applications such as voice over WLAN on an unprecedented scale.”

“Centralized WLANs have failed to deliver scalable outdoor service, because they require centralized policy enforcement, resulting in inefficient use of scarce over-the-air bandwidth. Smart Mobile overcomes this limitation through intelligent switching, which distributes policy enforcement throughout the network to optimize traffic flow and eliminate unnecessary traffic.”

In touting the Smart Mobile technology, Trapeze has the forthcoming 802.11n standard in mind. (802.11n is expected to be 50 times faster than 802.11b, and well over 10 times faster than 802.11a or 802.11g.)

Trapeze makes the case that by deploying Smart Mobile, companies looking to upgrade to 802.11n down the road won’t have to gut their switch closet to reap the benefits. “In contrast, Trapeze’s Smart Mobile is 802.11n ready out of the box, enabling customers to support a 10-fold increase in network load without having to upgrade their entire switched infrastructure,” according to the company.

“For CIOs and network managers who are wondering how to cost-effectively scale their WLANs to deliver enterprisewide mobility, support rapidly increasing numbers of users, and provide mobile applications such as voice and video, Smart Mobile provides in-place scaling. No forklift upgrades are required,” Simone said.

Time will tell how long it takes other vendors to start supporting 802.11n. According to InfoWorld Test Center Senior Contributing Editor (and Geek in Paradise) Brian Chee, “WMM is an integral part of 802.11n and is what WiFi VoIP is betting the farm on. So while folks like Tra-peze already have WMM and are demoing it with guys like DiVitas, the reality is that folks like Nokia, Erickson, Motorola, etc. are all waiting for 802.11n before really dumping a lot of bucks into WiFi VoIP. The 802.11n chipsets from folks like Broadcom are only in OEM samples right now.”

Smart Mobile will be made available this month, free to existing customers. It also will be built in to Trapeze products moving forwarded, though their costs will remain unchanged.

For more information, go to www.trapezenetworks.com.