Friday, 6 October 2006

Cisco, Cognio to Tackle Enterprise Radio Frequency Challenges

Cisco Systems and Cognio have joined hands to address a growing issue facing pervasive enterprise deployments of Wi-Fi networks, Radio Frequency (RF) interference.

"RF management should be a priority in any enterprise wireless LAN deployment," said Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president enterprise research, Yankee Group. "To fully realise the potential of a wireless network, it is critical to have an understanding of the RF environment and a means of managing RF conflicts. For any enterprise wireless LAN to scale, RF must be taken into account."

Complementing Cisco's Wireless Control System (WCS), Cisco will now offer Cognio's Spectrum Expert, a Wi-Fi spectrum analysis and monitoring tool. Working with WCS, Spectrum Expert gives information technology (IT) managers analysis and reporting of the airwaves, thus giving administrators an insight to RF issues, conflicts and detailed insights for resolving wireless network interferences.

Additionally, by allowing an analysis of RF usage in a working environment, enterprises can strengthen their WLAN security by determining the impact of non-Wi-Fi devices. They can for example, identify and isolate rogue devices used for unauthorised network access, Denial of Service attacks, spoofing and more.

"RF Spectrum analysis is a valuable tool that can effectively increase the ROI of a WLAN deployment, said David Bond, wireless systems consultant, Cumulus Consulting Group. "The ability to diagnose and repair problems in the physical layer means that you can improve the reliability and security of the Wi-Fi network. Having a reliable Wi-Fi network allows customers to use the network for business-critical applications, such as voice over Wi-Fi.