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Trapeze Announces 802.11n Access Point--With a Difference


Trapeze continues a recent pattern of calling out its competitors' weaknesses and making bold claims. The two market-share leaders, Cisco and Aruba, have held fast to their centralized traffic flow approach, but fourth-place Trapeze set its stake in the sand a few months ago by moving to a neo-distributed approach. With the near-term availability of 802.11n Draft 2.0 products, Trapeze drives home the point that a centralized approach with high-traffic volumes will lead to a higher wireless TCO because of controller upgrades--a reasonable concern. But Trapeze's claims regarding performance, standards compatibility and coverage are premature and tough to validate. Trapeze ought to evangelize the benefits and potential issues surrounding 802.11n, as well as educate both prospects and customers on how they ought to approach 802.11n migration and deployment.
Frank Bulk
NWC Contributing Technology Editor

Trapeze Networks this week announced an 802.11n-based wireless access point and emphasized a unique network architecture that the company claims will yield better performance and lower costs.

Products based on emerging 802.11n standards (testing won't begin until later this summer) are starting to appear from vendors. Trapeze's Mobility Point 432 (MP-432) employs 802.11n features, including 3x3 MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output), frame aggregation and 40-MHz channels. MP-432 is able to operate simultaneously in 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands, at 300 Mbps per band, for a total data rate of 600 Mbps, Trapeze said.

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