Proxim’s Unveils ORiNOCO Wireless LAN Switching System
New Switching System Designed to Meet Stringent Requirements of Wireless LAN Voice Support
Proxim Corporation (Nasdaq: PROX), a global leader in wireless networking equipment for Wi-Fi and broadband wireless, today announced details of its Proxim ORiNOCO Switching System, a wireless networking product family designed to address customers’ emerging need to support voice and data traffic across wireless LAN networks. The Proxim ORiNOCO Switching System is designed from the ground up to support voice traffic, delivering critical features such as intelligent “no delay” roaming, load balancing, advanced quality of service and end-to-end security.
With this announcement, Proxim establishes itself as the only vendor in the wireless industry to provide Wi-Fi access points, a wireless-aware switching system and outdoor broadband wireless solutions that allow enterprise customers to create true, end-to-end wireless applications. The Proxim ORiNOCO Switching System is the result of Proxim’s history of delivering innovative mobility solutions, its expertise in voice over WLAN protocol development, and its collaboration with Avaya and Motorola to develop converged wireless solutions that combine wireless LAN, cellular, and IP telephony.
“Although wireless switching is increasingly being viewed as the optimal architecture for wireless networking, solutions that have reached the market to date have clearly lacked support for seamless voice communications – the application we believe will drive the enterprise Wi-Fi market,” said Kevin Duffy, senior vice president of product management and R&D for Proxim. “Along with our partners, we determined some time ago that to address customers’ needs, we needed to deliver a wireless switching system that far exceeds the capabilities of existing systems, particularly with integrated Wi-Fi and cellular. With its inherent support for both data and voice, we believe the ORiNOCO Switching System addresses key challenges posed with the emerging requirement to reliably support voice and data across enterprise wireless LANs.”
Designed for Voice From the Ground Up
Unlike existing WLAN switches, the Proxim ORiNOCO Switching System architecture is purpose-built to address the unique demands that voice places on a wireless LAN infrastructure. Proxim has leveraged its close relationship with Avaya to deliver market-leading capabilities, which include:
- Support for higher user densities and less predictable mobility patterns – The Switching System offers infrastructure-driven fast roaming to accommodate a user’s need to maintain mobility while on voice calls anywhere in the enterprise.
- Seamless mobility – Since voice cannot tolerate session restarts, the Switching System incorporates pre-authentication and per-user, inter-switch tunneling to ensure that voice calls maintain flawless interconnections in highly segmented networks.
- Quality of Service – The Switching System supports a pre-802.11e-based standard QoS implementation to meet the rigorous delay, jitter and latency specifications associated with voice. It also supports an advanced, pre-authentication mechanism that registers voice and/or cellular traffic and automatically supplies the highest levels of QoS across the entire Wi-Fi network.
- Load Balancing and Bandwidth Management – The Switching System intelligently distributes loads and offers advanced bandwidth management to give all users the performance they require.
- Traffic Management – Integration with the IP-PBX and other mobility management elements will allow the Proxim Switching System to more efficiently maintain and manage voice packet traffic as users roam seamlessly across multiple switches throughout the enterprise.
"Enterprise-class wireless LAN systems are evolving from basic connectivity to systems that enable new classes of wireless applications,” said Abner Germanow, Research Analyst at International Data Corp. (IDC). "WLAN systems with voice and mobile integration create options for a new set of potential applications and reliability in wireless enterprise environments."
Details and Availability
The Proxim ORiNOCO Switching System includes the following:
- ORiNOCO Switching System Access Points – These switched access points, shipping in Q2 2004, are based on the new Proxim ORiNOCO AP-4000 Access Point (also announced today) architecture. Beginning in Q2 2004, Proxim is delivering flexible access point options – ranging from centralized to distributed intelligence – to meet customers’ application requirements. Both the Proxim ORiNOCO AP-4000 Access Point and new ORiNOCO Switching System Access Points will be supported by Proxim and Proxim partner switching solutions to deliver advanced voice and data support.
- Multiple switching products shipping in 2004 – Proxim is integrating its core voice-over wireless LAN technology as described above into partner Ethernet switching platforms. These jointly-developed products will ship throughout 2004 as part of the ORiNOCO Switching System, and will be marketed through Proxim’s global channels.
