Cisco Prepares a New 802.11n Chip

Cisco Systems, a well-known and respected company in the corporate and enterprise networking solutions, announced that is will start shipping wireless products based on the newer 802.11n standard in October. Among the big players on the networking field, Cisco Systems is the first company to start shipping access points and switches for the new wireless standard at enterprise class standards.

The new wireless networking standard promises greater stability, bandwidth and reliability than previous versions like 802.11a, b, and g. Now Cisco is releasing a line of products called by the manufacturing company "the next-generation Unified Wireless Network" which is composed from the Aironet 1250 Series access point, a new wireless local area network Controller system based on its Catalyst 6500 line of switches and new integrated software services via version 4.2 of its Unified Wireless Network suite, according to the news site informationweek. Even if the current 802.11n wireless standard is just a draft and the standard will be finalized in the future, the entire wireless manufacturing industry adopted it as the de facto standard so Cisco will have a multitude of machines capable of connecting to its new networking equipment.

According to Cisco Systems' director of mobility solutions Ben Gibson, most companies and enterprises go for wired networks and sometimes as an exception they also install wireless equipments and while Cisco always supported the wired networking expansion, the company feels that now would be a good time to change lanes. "Our system provides IT managers with an easy solution to both backhaul and power challenges in the new environment," said Gibson. "In our view, moving to .11n is both a wired and a wireless decision." The problem for a giant like Cisco is that in a complete wireless networking world, the company would face increasing pressure from upstart businesses like Aruba which struggle to gain a foothold on the market.

As the Wi-Fi Alliance conducted a series of interoperability tests between the wireless equipments supplied by several manufacturers it is clear that the entire wireless environment is about to see a huge number of Cisco branded solutions as according to the company its Aironet 1250 node is the only commercially available product to have passed all the Alliance's tests for compliance with the 802.11n draft 2.0 wireless standard.