INTERCONNECTS

Foundry Networks today announced new products and features for its IronPoint wireless LAN (WLAN) solutions including a new RF monitor and RF management application, major feature enhancements to its multi-mode 802.11a/g/b IronPoint Access Points, a new software WLAN upgrade package for its FastIron Edge switches, and an updated version of IronView WLAN Network Manager, in a concerted effort to provide simplified, centrally managed and scaleable enterprise wireless deployments. The new products, features and software releases represent significant enhancements to Foundry's integrated wired/wireless offerings, already deployed by numerous large organizations around the world, and strengthen Foundry's leadership position in providing complete network solutions for organizations looking to extend their network infrastructure with high-performance, enterprise-class secure wireless solutions. "Now that issues such as wireless security have been more or less overcome, enterprises are increasingly looking at wireless as an everyday augmentation to the wired network, and in the next year we will see new higher-speed WLAN standards and other developments that will make elegant integration of the wired/wireless infrastructure and network performance increasingly important," said Zeus Kerravala, vice president of research at the Yankee Group. "Ease of management, long-term cost of ownership, and scalability are equally important with or without the wires." Foundry's new WLAN products and enhancements include: -- Integrated RF Monitoring: a major new Foundry-engineered feature of the IronPoint APs, RF monitoring improves security by detecting and suppressing rogue APs, alerting users to Denial-of-Service attacks, and other features. All new or deployed IronPoint APs can be configured to act as dedicated, high-performance RF monitors and can be centrally managed from a new release of IronView Network Manager, Foundry's network management system. Integrating RF monitoring and management into Foundry's wireless solution eliminates the need for customers to purchase and deploy a separate, single-purpose RF monitoring solution. -- FastIron Edge Integrated Wired/Wireless LAN Switches: Foundry's new generation of FastIron Edge integrated wired/wireless LAN switches and IronPoint APs support simple, secure "out of the box" AP deployment through automatic discovery and configuration of IronPoint APs, improved switch port security to prevent unauthorized access, and scalability to support thousands of APs. -- Enhanced Fast and Secure Layer 3 Mobility: this new feature allows users to securely roam seamlessly across switches, subnets and routers, and provides a low-latency mobility foundation for deployments of wireless Voice-over-IP (VoFi), which are expected to grow widely in enterprises. -- Virtual AP: allows the user to extend wired VLAN segments into multiple mobility domains on IronPoint APs, and protect each mobility domain with unique security policies. -- Real-time Intrusion Detection and Lockout: protects wireless LANs from unauthorized access by detecting authentication failures in real-time and automatically locking out repeat offenders. -- Updated Release of IronView Network Manager: builds support for the new wireless features into Foundry's centralized switching and routing management system. Integrated Wired/Wireless Solutions Foundry's integrated solutions provide new customers as well as the company's more than 7,100 customers with a compelling edge solution to support wireless access as an augmentation to their high performance network infrastructure, thus protecting their existing network investments. Foundry's integrated wireless solutions feature three components: the IronPoint 200 IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards-based multi-mode, full-featured Access Points; the IronView Network Manager SNMP-based Network Management System; and integrated wireless LAN FastIron Edge switches. By leveraging the latest 802.11 standards, these products deliver a wireless LAN solution, which offers strong security, seamless mobility, centralized management and ease of use, leading to lower long-term cost of ownership. "With our integrated wireless and wired infrastructure strategy and wireless LAN products, Foundry offers a compelling total enterprise network infrastructure solution," said Ken Cheng, vice president and general manager of Layer 2/3 Enterprise Networking for Foundry. "Wireless LAN is essential to the overall enterprise network infrastructure and upcoming standards like 802.11n and applications like VoFi will increase of the adoption of mobility solutions. We are committed to being a leader in this market and maintaining a robust and seamless solution to provide our customers with an integrated, reliable, scalable and secure network infrastructure." Other key features of Foundry's integrated wired/wireless solutions include: -- VPN Passthrough -- 802.1x Port Authentication -- Automatic Port Deactivation -- Scheduled Realm Activation -- sFlow (user session tracking) -- Security Audit Trail -- RADIUS Accounting -- 802.1x Dynamic VLAN Assignment & User Policies Pricing (U.S. List Price) and Availability IronPoint APs with RF monitoring and other newly-announced features are priced at $795. IronView Network Manager -- IronPoint WLAN Edition is $1,995 and the wireless LAN upgrade kit for the FastIron Edge switch is $995. These products are available now.