Blog TuneNetworks

Monday, 3 March 2008

TROPOS NETWORKS NAMED WORLDWIDE MARKET LEADER FOR WI-FI MESH NETWORKS IN 2007

SUNNYVALE, CA -- February 26, 2008 -- Tropos® Networks, the market leader in wireless IP broadband mesh networks, today announced that in 2007 the company maintained its leadership of the Wi-Fi mesh market in sales revenue, market share and units shipped worldwide, according to the Dell ‘Oro Group’s year end market report just published.

“We have continued to build upon our market and technology leadership to address the growing and evolving demand for reliable, wireless IP broadband infrastructures that can be used for multiple applications,” said Denise Barton, director of marketing for Tropos Networks.”

“Municipalities and other organizations use our solutions to improve the efficiencies of mobile workers and reduce operational costs. Cities most often use the networks for public safety – mobile police, fire and EMS vehicles; for fixed and mobile video surveillance; for utility automation, to reduce operational costs and improve billing accuracy. Industrial deployments are increasingly popular in harsh environments such as shipping ports and open pit mines where the network is used to improve business process efficiencies and reduce operating costs.”

“Our focus and commitment to the outdoor Wi-Fi mesh market is clear which is why Tropos continues to lead in market share and sales, technology innovation and customer deployments. In 2008, we look forward to working with our customers and partners to meet the needs of this exciting and growing market worldwide,” Barton concluded.

About Tropos Networks, Inc.
Tropos® Networks is the market leader in delivering metro-scale wireless mesh network systems. The company's systems have been selected to unwire more major league cities than all competitors combined and are installed in 30 countries. The patented Tropos MetroMesh™ architecture delivers the ultimate scalability, high capacity at low cost and great user experience demanded by service providers, municipalities and network users. Tropos Networks' unique expertise includes high-performance mesh software development, mesh RF engineering, metro-scale network planning, deployment and optimization, and navigating the municipal approval process. Tropos Networks is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, please visit www.tropos.com, call 408-331-6800 or write to info@tropos.com.

Tropos and PWRP are registered trademarks of Tropos Networks, Inc. Tropos Networks, MetroMesh, AMCE, TMCX, SABRE, CMDP and Metro-Scale Mesh Networking Defined are trademarks of Tropos Networks, Inc. All other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holder(s).

TROPOS NETWORKS NAMED WORLDWIDE MARKET LEADER FOR WI-FI MESH NETWORKS IN 2007

ARUBA CENTRALIZED WLAN SYSTEM RECEIVES WPA2 CERTIFICATION.

Aruba Wireless Networks (Aruba) is the first centralized wireless LAN (WLAN) systems supplier to obtain 802.11i (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance.

With this certification, the Aruba WLAN system offers corporate and government customers the highest level of wireless security available today. The Aruba system delivers security services through its unique wireless grid architecture -- a structured, high-performance approach to deploying mission-critical WLANs.

WPA2 is based on the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.11i amendment to the 802.11 standard, which was ratified on July 29, 2004. WPA2 uses a more advanced encryption technique called the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and is backwards compatible with WPA, ensuring that organizations that have already implemented WPA can easily migrate to the new 802.11i standard.

"Aruba is commended for receiving WPA2 certification for its centralized WLAN switching system. This level of commitment to interoperability and security is a clear commitment to the evolving needs of their customers," commented Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

"Enterprises continue to view security as a key roadblock to the pervasive deployment of Wi-Fi," said Merwyn Andrade, chief technology officer for Aruba. "The WPA2 standard and Aruba's certification are major milestones for enterprises and government organizations planning to deploy wireless. By integrating WPA2 into a centralized WLAN switching system, enterprises can now confidently enable mobile access to their existing data-center applications without sacrificing security or performance."

Centralized WPA2 Security Delivers Device-To-Datacenter Encryption

Aruba's WLAN systems uniquely centralize all 802.11i security functions, including wireless encryption, authentication and user access controls to deliver the highest levels of security for enterprise deployments. Unlike other WLAN approaches, Aruba's WLAN system performs AES encryption inside the WLAN switch rather than in access points (APs). This approach ensures that encrypted wireless traffic is carried over the wired network and immune to security threats.

"WPA2 is a great leap forward in securing the air," said Keerti Melkote, vice president of Product Management and Marketing for Aruba. "However, terminating WPA2 encryption in the access point effectively limits the benefits of WPA2 to airborne traffic alone. It is well known that the internal wired network is insecure and exposed to misuse. By terminating encryption in a centralized WLAN switch instead of the edge access point, Aruba is delivering the industry's only device-to-datacenter encryption solution based on WPA2 and protects wireless traffic from the threats in the air and in the wired network."

Centralized Encryption Enables Low-Cost Workspace Deployment of Access Points

Since all encryption is performed directly within each Aruba WLAN system, encryption keys remain completely secure thereby avoiding the latencies and insecurities associated with distributing encryption keys to each AP. In addition, centralized encryption enables enterprises to safely deploy APs in user workspace rather than in the ceiling. This can dramatically lower installation costs and improve wireless performance through the dense deployment of APs.

Because encryption is performed through a hardware-based cryptographic engine, Aruba's modular WLAN system delivers industry leading WPA2 performance. A single Aruba 5100 can process up to 3.6 Gbps of encrypted user traffic -- a key metric in determining WLAN system performance and scalability.

Pre-Authentication and Key Reuse Enables Faster Roaming

802.11i delivers strong link layer security using digital encryption keys that are generated when a client authenticates with the network. However 802.11i must be adapted to meet the stringent mobility needs of real-time communications such as voice and video.

When a user roams from one AP to another, fresh encryption keys must be renegotiated according to the 802.11i specification. This renegotiation often proves fatal for voice and other real-time communications -- taking hundreds of milliseconds, or even seconds. This results in high latencies, scalability problems and multiple points of failure.

Aruba's centralized encryption breaks new ground for 802.11i deployments by integrating all necessary components for seamless and secure mobility directly within the WLAN system. Key benefits include:

-- Improved WLAN scalability from not having to distribute and synchronize encryption keys to access points when a station roams,

-- Improved RADIUS scalability by offloading authentication for every client roaming event, and

-- Faster secure roaming via centralized key management for 802.11i

With Aruba's centralized encryption model, user encryption keys are stored in a centralized wireless system and do not get propagated to the APs. Faster handoffs and greater scalability are a natural result. In addition, since the pair-wise master key (PMK) is stored centrally and never gets propagated out of the switch, its integrity is assured for much longer periods providing better mobile security.

Distributed or hybrid approaches, where encryption is performed at the AP, must anticipate user mobility by proactively pushing encryption keys to different APs. Aruba eliminates this problem and its associated inefficiencies by centralizing the encryption, mobility state and traffic policies for each user directly within the WLAN system.

Aruba products Wi-Fi CERTIFIED for WPA2 are available immediately.

About Aruba

Aruba Wireless Networks develops and markets centralized systems that enable corporations to secure their networks from the dual threats of Wi-Fi and mobility. Aruba's solution consists of a full range of programmable security platforms designed to securely connect mobile users and mobile devices to corporate applications. Aruba is privately-held and has operations in the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific and India and employs staff around the world. Aruba has received over $59 million in three rounds of venture funding from top-tier venture firms - Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Trinity Ventures and WK Technology Fund.

Aruba Wireless Networks can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.arubanetworks.com/.

For more information, call 408/504-5487

ARUBA CENTRALIZED WLAN SYSTEM RECEIVES WPA2 CERTIFICATION.

Sunday, 17 February 2008

The Theory of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network

With the Internet becoming an increasingly significant part of our lives, the dream of a WiFi-enabled city is becoming closer and closer to reality. One of the hindrances to that dream, however, is the high router requirement; for wireless internet to blanket a city, thousands of wireless routers must be strategically placed to ensure constant coverage. Since this is a process that can become quite complicated and costly, researchers at UCLA began looking for an existing technology to which routers could be attached or involved. Since Los Angeles is a city already plagued with traffic problems, the UCLA Vehicular Network Lab was established to study the possibility of wirelessly connected automobiles.

The Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network, or VANET, is a technology that uses moves cars as nodes in a network to create a mobile network. VANET turns every participating car into a wireless router or node, allowing cars approximately 100 to 300 metres of each other to connect and, in turn, create a network with a wide range. As cars fall out of the signal range and drop out of the network, other cars can join in, connecting vehicles to one another so that a mobile Internet is created. It is estimated that the first systems that will integrate this technology are police and fire vehicles to communicate with each other for safety purposes.

Some related video links (could not be embedded due to copyright reasons):

http://www.vehicularlab.org/video/BigBro.wmv
An emulation of a terrorist detection system using VANET. Police cars, provided with threat-detection sensors (e.g. for threats such as chemicals, radiation, etc.) can communicate and collaborate to neutralize the situation.

http://www.vehicularlab.org/video/Mobility_Comparison.mov
A computer simulation of communication protocols and algorithms based very accurate vehicular traffic mobility traces. From the UCLA labs so it is quite technical.

ORGANIZATIONAL USES: THE PROS

VANET offers countless benefits to organizations of any size. Automobile high speed Internet access would transform the vehicle’s on-board computer from a nifty gadget to an essential productivity tool, making virtually any web technology available in the car. While such a network does pose certain safety concerns (for example, one cannot safely type an email while driving), this does not limit VANET’s potential as a productivity tool. It allows for “dead time”—time that is being wasted while waiting for something—to be transformed into “live time”—time that is being used to accomplish tasks. A commuter can turn a traffic jam into a productive work time by having his email downloaded and read to him by the on-board computer, or if traffic slows to a halt, read it himself. While waiting in the car to pick up a friend or relative, one can surf the Internet. Even GPS systems can benefit, as they can integrated with traffic reports to provide the fastest route to work. Lastly, it would allow for free, VoIP services such as GoogleTalk or Skype between employees, lowering telecommunications costs.

ORGANIZATIONAL USES: THE CONS

While the Internet can be a useful productivity tool, it can also prove to be quite distracting, resulting in safety and actually time-wasting concerns. Like cellular phones, the Internet can be tempting and can distract users from the road. Checking emails, surfing the web or even watching YouTube videos can engross drivers and lead to accidents.

Similarly, while drivers may have the opportunity to do work while on the road, they also may use this opportunity to engage in other leisurely tasks, such as VoIP with family, watch news highlights or listen to podcasts.

THE FINAL WORD

While still years away, VANET is a technology that could significantly increase productivity during times that are usually unproductive. However, to achieve this, VANET users must first overcome the leisurely temptations and distractions that the Internet provides.

REFERENCES:

Piquepaille, Roland. “Turning Cars into Wireless Network Nodes.” ZDNet
Tech 3 Jun. 2007. 30 Sep. 2007
Available at: <http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=593>.

Vehicular Network Lab @ UCLA – Implementing the First Campus
Vehicular Testbed. Vehicular Lab. 30 Sep. 2007
Available at: <http://www.vehicularlab.org/>.

McCloskey, Paul. “UC Profs as Car Traffic as Basis of Mobile Internet.”
Campus Technology 4 Jun. 2007. 30 Sep. 2007
Available at: <http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=48374>

“The Mobile Internet: Your Car Could Save a Life.” medGadget 29 May
2007. 30 Sep. 2007
Available at: <http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2007/05/the_mobile_internet_cars_firetrucks_ambulances_oh_my.html>.