At approximately $141,000 without redundant power supplies and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces on the MXs, Trapeze's solution was the most expensive--more than 60 percent higher than Airespace's. Of course, if you assume that capital costs represent about 25 percent of TCO (total cost of ownership) and buy Trapeze's argument that it will save operational costs, then the cost difference is not as significant. In addition, because all MPs connect directly to MXs without the need for separate Ethernet ports, there are some minor Ethernet port-cost savings that don't come through in our cost model.
Mobility System. Trapeze Networks, (877) FLY-TRPZ, (925) 474-2200. www.trapezenetworks.com
Symbol Technologies was the first vendor to introduce a true distributed enterprise wireless solution last year with its Symbol Wireless Switch and accompanying thin APs, which it calls Access Ports.
With little more than a radio, an Ethernet interface and some PoE (Power over Ethernet) circuitry, Symbol's Wireless Switch design is the archetype of thin-AP solutions. When powered on, the Access Port locates the Wireless Switch via broadcasts, and the switch responds with an appropriate configuration. As with the other switching products, Symbol's APs house no valuable information and can't be used without the central controller. That makes theft a low-risk proposition, further enhanced by the slick design that let you hide access ports above a ceiling.
Wireless networking is a shared medium, and though the Wireless Switch is more of an appliance-type WLAN device, its moniker more accurately describes the Airespace 4000, Trapeze and Aruba systems, which sport switched Ethernet ports to which APs can be attached. The Wireless Switch is overlayed on a standard Ethernet wired infrastructure. The product offers redundant 10/100 Ethernet ports and will support Gigabit Ethernet in a future version. Although it can sit on a single subnet, the Wireless Switch is intended to handle 802.1q trunked VLANs so it can communicate with APs and users across all subnets. For APs that don't sit on a roaming user's native VLAN, subnet roaming is achieved by tunneling traffic across non-native APs' VLANs to and from the Wireless Switch, without the need to traverse a router. This reliance on VLANs is functional, but complex.
Of all the vendors included in this review, Symbol has the most experience dealing with a range of wireless handheld devices, and its product is optimized for this type of environment. For example, Symbol pointed out that wireless VoIP (voice over IP) phones, handhelds or any device that takes advantage of PSP (power save polling) can experience extra latency and have their battery-saving capabilities negated in environments not intended to handle sporadic mobile traffic.
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