These developments are both part of its next-generation roadmap for enterprise WiFi, a market in which Synergy gives Symbol a 49% share in volumes shipped each year and 39% in annual revenues.
Manjunath Mahishi, director of product management at Symbol’s wireless infrastructure division, said that while it remains committed to overlay networks with a WLAN switch controlling thin APs, it is also developing OEM relationships with companies such as IBM Corp, which may deploy its technology on corporate LANs as in the first generation of so-called fat APs.
The first stage in the delivery of its next-gen architecture, scheduled for October this year, will be a software upgrade for the company’s existing high-end WLAN switch, the WS5100. Mahishi said the upgrade will see the 5100 move from a single-processor, Intel-based product to a Linux-based platform with support for multiple processors.
Importantly, the new platform will also include support for layer-3 deployments, in which each AP has its own IP address, whereas the current generation is only for L2 environments.
This is important because the APs can sit on different subnets but be managed centrally, whereas with L2, you can only do this by dragging a VLAN across subnets, which makes it very difficult on a multi-subnetted network, explained Mahishi.
And since the next generation of 5100 is significantly increasing the number of APs supported per switch, enabling Symbol to target larger enterprises, the L3 capability will be critical.
This will entail a change in the proprietary protocol that runs between the 5100 and Symbol’s APs, from the current WISP to what it calls WISPe, the ‘e’ standing for ‘enhanced’.
In the January/February 2007 timeframe, Symbol plans a larger WLAN switch, provisionally named the WS7000, with support for 256 APs compared to the 5100’s 48. Scheduled for April or May next year, the company will move to the next stage, delivering what its calls RF abstraction, a further upgrade to the underlying software whereby the switch will be able to handle both the WiFi and RFID radio frequencies.
The logic here is evident: Symbol is both a major player in WiFi and RFID, a situation shared by none of its competitors in either market, so common, central management of both will represent a competitive advantage in serving its existing customers in retail and supply chain.
After the initial stage whereby both APs and RFID readers will be manageable from a single device, which is scheduled for mid-2007, in the second half of next year it will launch a bundled AP-and-reader.
