Wireless Alert

Industry analysis by expert Joanie Wexler, plus links to the day's wireless news headlines

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Free e-mail newsletter on wireless in the enterprise news and resources from Network World.

Test your memory: the wireless decade in review: 09/27/11; How much wireless trivia have you retained?
Wireless: My, how you've grown: 09/23/11; When I began writing this newsletter 11 years ago, wireless was a completely different animal than it is today.
Tech breakthrough to double mobile WAN rates: 09/20/11; Earlier this month, Rice University announced that its engineering researchers had figured out a way to double the capacity of today's mobile WANs without having to add cell towers. The answer: full-duplex technology.
Enterprise app stores evolve: 09/16/11; On two recent occasions, I ran into everyday users who hadn't found it at all obvious that they needed the Apple iTunes application to download mobile apps to their shiny new iPads.
Will tablets rule?: 09/13/11; Tablet computers might soon usurp both smartphones and notebook computers, particularly in small and midsize businesses.
Commercial devices to get military-grade security: 09/09/11; Super-tight cryptography in off-the-shelf mobile products will soon ease wireless deployments in government agencies, and deployments could subsequently spill over into enterprise equipment.
Managing mobile expectations: 09/06/11; I've lost count of the number of times in my workweek that a briefing is canceled, a meeting gets rescheduled, and an email arrives saying, "Sorry it's taken me so long to respond to your message [of two weeks ago], but I've been traveling."
Mobile mega-merger woes: 09/02/11; The Department of Justice's decision to formally cry "antitrust!" and sue to block AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile USA caught the wireless industry by surprise this week.
Mobile contact center moves to the cloud: 08/30/11; Most organizations need a way to route callers and Internet visitors to customer service experts within the company. Traditionally, larger companies have met the requirement with a physical call center, where stationary agents sit and handle customer queries directed to them from a queue.
Survival kit considerations: 08/26/11; Depending on where you are and when you read this, Hurricane Irene may be approaching. As I write, at press time, Irene has just unleashed her wrath on the Bahamas and is moving to the north and northwest toward the Mid-Atlantic States and New England.
The mobile security aspects of VDI: 08/23/11; Enterprise mobility chaos is driving a wealth of mobile device management and security offerings from a wide variety of vendors. Will virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) products and services become a component of the MDM market, too?
Cisco adds wireless-only endpoint security option: 08/19/11; Remember back in April, when Cisco overhauled its network management strategy and announced the Cisco Enterprise Prime product portfolio? The company has now decided to offer at least one component of the suite -- the Identity Services Engine (ISE) -- as a stand-alone, wireless-only module.
Google and Moto -- then what?: 08/16/11; The news is only a day old, and already Google's $12.5 billion proposed acquisition of handset maker and OEM partner Motorola Mobility has been analyzed six ways from Sunday.
What's shaking in location technology?: 07/29/11; Location-tracking services from mobile operators are no longer limited to the reach of their own cellular network coverage. Cross-carrier location services are available from companies such as AT&T and Vodafone, plugging visibility gaps and opening doors to new enterprise applications.
Location, location, location: 07/26/11; The possibilities associated with using location information in mobility applications are endless, and the wireless industry has only touched the surface.
Is wireless making us nuts?: 07/22/11; A spirited discussion erupted recently among some Facebook friends who resented having their "anywhere, anytime" access privileges temporarily revoked to force them to focus on the meeting at hand.
Enterprise tablets: Not too little, but a bit on the late side: 07/19/11; A year after announcing its enterprise-centric Cius tablet, Cisco is poised to finally make the Android-based, Wi-Fi-capable device available at the end of the month.
Getting a grip on Wi-Fi performance: 07/15/11; The Wi-Fi client environment is growing chock-full of devices of varying output levels and receive sensitivities. The consensus seems to be that it's up to the enterprise-class Wi-Fi infrastructure vendors to tame the airwaves, while consumer client device makers focus on the slick and the cool.
Conquering BYOD congestion in Wi-Fi: 07/12/11; Not so long ago, enterprise Wi-Fi users were the exception, not the rule. Early Wi-Fi office users accessed the network with laptops selected and configured by the enterprise. Accommodating occasional data users with well-understood, corporate-imaged, Wi-Fi-enabled notebook computers was pretty straightforward.
Caution: Wi-Fi design challenges ahead: 07/08/11; With a kitchen sink full of Wi-Fi client devices showing up in Wi-Fi's 2.4GHz and 5GHz unlicensed bands, enterprises are starting to re-examine their enterprise WLAN infrastructure designs. In addition to perhaps installing more access points (AP) to create additional capacity, consider in your design the broad mix of client devices that might be connecting and their respective behaviors.
Final spectrum analysis considerations (Part 4): 07/05/11; In this fourth and final installment of our discussion about spectrum analysis and its relevance to Wi-Fi purchase decisions, let's consider three final questions.
Spectrum analysis: 'Potato or potahto?' (Part 3): 07/01/11; In this third installment of our look into what role bundled spectrum analysis should play in Wi-Fi purchase decisions, let's chip away at a few other questions and considerations broached in Part 1 of this series.
The ins and outs of spectrum analysis, part 2: 06/28/11; I posed a number of questions last week about various attributes of spectrum analyzers and their relevance to how well your Wi-Fi network ultimately performs. In this sequel, I'll address the first question and share some other folks' views on the subject.
Are all spectrum analyzers created equal?: 06/24/11; The past couple of years have seen a rash of spectrum analyzers built into wireless LAN infrastructure equipment, key tools for identifying those pesky sources of interference that screw up our wireless connections and application performance. How important are they in the overall collection of interference-fighting ammo that Wi-Fi vendors have in their arsenals?
IT gains cloud-based MDM and security option: 06/21/11; Combine two of the hottest buzzwords in IT, and what do you have? Why, mobile device management in the cloud, of course.