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802.11n Is Here. Get Ready For A Wire-Free Enterprise: Page 3 of 6

MAKE THE MOVE
Truly transforming the workspace extends beyond installing access points and providing laptops, to physical reconfiguration. Take Capital One's Future of Work program. The financial services firm's 360-acre, eight-building campus almost doubled the number of employees it could house, from 650 to 1,100, by adopting the concept of hoteling. Rather than being assigned a specific location, employees who participate in this optional program have access to a generic cubicle, as well as conference rooms and open areas. Space is essentially overbooked. Each employee is assigned a telephone number that flows to a Cisco voice-over-IP phone and/or BlackBerry. The WLAN is the primary medium for network access.

"Today, work is what you do, not a place you go," says Rob Alexander, Capital One's CIO. "The wireless and mobile technologies we provide through our Future of Work environment provide our associates greater flexibility in how and where they work, which in turn improves collaboration and productivity." Employees are happy, and the company saves big on facilities.

Intel takes a similar approach at its Jones Farm, Ore., campus. This location serves almost 6,000 employees using Cisco wireless gear. Intel started with an overlay network for wireless access, but as Wi-Fi caught on, it's become the first choice for employees. In addition to Centrino-based laptops (of course), Intel also uses Cisco Wi-Fi phones for voice services, as well as softphones and dual-mode devices.

Cisco has its own initiative, called the Connected Workspace. In line with its preferred converged approach, wireless is deployed everywhere, but wired ports for high-bandwidth communications needs, such as backups and video streaming, also are available. Still, the company has cut its need for copper by 60%. "The Connected Workspace encourages collaboration and reduces real estate and infrastructure costs, while accommodating different work styles," Cisco's Kozup says.

Aruba and Motorola have been the most vocal vendor supporters of the wire-free office. With no wired revenue to lose, they can only gain by stealing away dollars that would normally be spent on their competitors' Ethernet switches. With 802.11n offering comparable performance to a wired network, but with added mobility, they have a strong argument.

Of course, the wireless office is like the paperless office--though electronic documents and e-mail have become the main forms of information storage and redistribution, there's still paper exchanged in the postal mail. In the same way, wireless will become the primary connection only at the access layer. "'All wireless' is a bit of a misnomer," says Kozup. There will still be cables, but they'll reside predominately in the distribution and core layers of the network, unseen by the average user.

SECURITY MATTERS
The security breach at TJ Maxx parent TJX, where attackers took advantage of a wireless connection secured only with Wired Equivalent Privacy to capture credit card information on tens of millions of the retailer's customers, remains fresh in many CIOs' minds. The fact that the key element in that equation is "secured only with WEP" is a detail easily ignored by the security paranoid.

Done right, Wi-Fi can be deployed with greater security than wired networks, which often leave ports unprotected in cubicles and conference rooms. Because security concerns have long been a drag on WLAN adoption rates, it's now standard form to use 802.1X to ascertain a connection's user credentials and the Advanced Encryption Standard to encrypt traffic until it reaches a wireless controller in the data center or at the network edge. Those still using a VPN overlay on an open wireless network, take note: Unless you have specific application requirements or hardware limitations, now is the time to move to 802.1X with AES.

A wireless network's greatest vulnerability is in performance-degrading interference or denial-of-service techniques, some facilitated by options in the 802.11n standard. Your wireless infrastructure management system may be able to pinpoint the source of malicious traffic, or else a product from an overlay wireless intrusion-prevention system vendor like AirDefense, AirMagnet, or AirTight can do that and more. Work on the 802.11w standard is progressing to offer management frame protection, among other capabilities, to fill gaps.