trapeze networks

Belden buys Trapeze for $133M

Sue Marek — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:40:36 -0400

Component maker Belden snapped up enterprise WLAN gear maker Trapeze Networks for $133 million in cash. Belden says the deal will help it increase its position in the signal transmission market and enable it to address its customers growing need for mobility.

Trapeze Networks, based in Pleasanton, Calif., was one of many startups that pioneered the concept of the wireless LAN switch, which links the access point to a central control and allows the clients to roam seamlessly. This deal has been rumored for several weeks.

For more:
- Read this press release
- See this NetworkWorld article

Related stories:
Trapeze shifts WLAN distribution model. See this Trapeze article
Cisco comfortably leads among WLAN vendors. See this WLAN article.

Trapeze shifts WLAN distribution model

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 20:01:36 -0400

The finale of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony includes a very long coda, in which the main themes of the movement are played in compressed form. The symphony ends with no fewer than 29(!) bars of C major chords, played fortissimo. For the uninitiated listener, the long coda presents a problem: The bars are interspersed with rather lengthy pauses, so it is difficult to know when the symphony ends and when one should begin to applaud in appreciation. No one wants to clap too early, or too late. It is the same with the endless tussle between thin and fat APs: You don't know when to begin and applaud because just as you think that the performance is over and one side has won, there is another loud chord issuing.

The first generation of usable, business-class APs were what we would now call fat (also smart or intelligent) APs--designed to have everything on board so that they could be connected to any Ethernet switch. Many also support security and management features and, depending on the vendor, additional functionality to cope with fast roaming. When WLANs began to be more mainstream, and were being adopted at higher rates both at home and at the enterprise, some smart people thought that the fat AP should be replaced by a thin one to drive down the cost of WLANs. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

Trapeze Networks is shifting its switching distribution model in the hope that its Wireless LAN Mobility Exchange switch will handle VoWLAN and 802.11n environments better than competitive centralized models. Trapeze has begun shipping its Smart Mobile software this week. The solution moves copies of Station Switching Records to every AP in an 802.11 network, in the process providing local copies of information on QoS policies, firewall protection and Virtual LAN tags. The solution also allows encryption to be handled in distributed fashion, and the company says it can better support the speeds of 802.11n networks, measured in Gbps. The distributed forwarding information has the added advantage of allowing for higher-layer links to be made in outdoor WLAN environments (this would be similar to Layer 3 and 4 wireless backhaul systems provided by dedicated microwave radio companies). As important: Trapeze will be able to link enterprise meshes using Layer 2 and 3 tunnels.

The intelligent switching of Trapeze's Smart Mobile thus departs from today's preferred WLAN architecture, which typically restricts switching to the central controllers and requires all data traffic to pass through the controller, with the resulting high levels of latency and jitter. Smart Mobile allows organizations to optimize traffic by centralizing or distributing data forwarding based on the requirements of the underlying application. For applications which require low latency such as VoWLAN, Smart Mobile distributes switching functionality to the APs throughout the network, enabling them to communicate directly in a peer-to-peer fashion without requiring round trips to the central controller. This allows enterprises to distribute the switching of all their voice traffic--but centrally forward all data traffic.

For more on Trapeze's new approach:
- see this company press release
- and Ted Samson's Infoworld report

Trend: Dutch hospital deploys WLAN

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:01:36 -0400

The healthcare industry was among the first to adopt WiFi, and as the quality of wireless transmission improves and the security of such transmissions bolstered, hospitals are beginning to increase their reliance on WLANs for an ever greater number of services and missions. Walcheren Hospital in Vlissingen, the Netherlands, has 350 beds and 1,300 employees. The hospital has just deployed an enterprise-grade WLAN from trapeze Networks in its cardiology department and pediatrics wards.

The kids in the pediatrics section use donated laptops and the WLAN to access the Internet, exchange emails, and play video games--activities which help them cope with the drudgery and discomfort of a hospital stay. In the cardiac units, however, the WLAN is used not only for accessing patients' records, allowing the doctors to educate themselves about a patient's medical history as they stand next to the patient's bed, but also for real time reading of electrocardiogram (ECG): Doctors can now have digital ECG images captured from the patient's bedside and study these images and test results from anywhere in the hospital.

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) staff at Walcheren Hospital said that wireless access offered substantial benefits over a wired network: They cited flexibility, simpler management, strong security, and lower operating costs as advantages. Walcheren Hospital initially deployed 15 Trapeze Mobility Point MP-372 APs, two Trapeze Mobility Exchange MX-400 switches, and the Trapeze MXR-2 switch. The hospital uses the Trapeze RingMaster WLAN lifecycle management tool suite for centralized planning, configuration, management, monitoring and performance optimization. The ICT staff is already planning to extend the Trapeze WLAN throughout the remainder of the hospital.

For more on the Walcheren WLAN deployment
- take a look at this Trapeze press release

PLUS: Nurses at the Hancock Regional Hospital in Greenfield, IN will soon be using VoWiFi phones as part of the hospital's campaign to increase nurse's mobility and reduce network costs. Report

Cisco comfortably leads among WLAN vendors

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 19:01:37 -0500

There may not be many differences in features and quality between WLAN equipment from Cisco and such equipment from other companies. Still, Cisco leads all other vendors comfortably, according to a recent study by Forrester Research. In a close examination of the top seven WLAN system vendors, Cisco was the clear victor, said Forrester's Ellen Daley. "Cisco is above everyone," she said. "They're the one to catch, but they're going to be hard to catch."

Forrester evaluated the leading WLAN vendors--Aruba Networks, Trapeze Networks, 3Com, Nortel Networks, Symbol Technologies, and Hewlett-Packard's ProCurve division--in three categories: strategy, current offerings and market presence. Those categories were then broken down into 44 sub-categories. Overall, Cisco ranked highest and was followed by Aruba, Trapeze and Nortel. "Cisco not only has the largest market presence--about 70 percent of all WLAN deployments use Cisco gear--but it also has the most complete vision of WLANs and their integration with wired networks," Daley wrote. "Aruba and Trapeze are fast followers in technology, but both have small market presence compared with Cisco."

For more on Forrester's report:
- see Andrew Hickey's searchnetworking article