Enterprises with branch offices, as well as schools, universities, healthcare institutions and government-run public access locations, can use the 3Com branch office wireless products to continue evolving their networks on the path to unified wired/wireless networks with superior security and RF (radio frequency) management. Today, 3Com delivers secure converged solutions that integrate an advanced form of secure wireless roaming, rogue detection and RF management technology into existing wired networks without disruption.
"With 415 Access Points across 8 hospitals, this is one of the largest wireless installations in Europe. After thorough competitive testing, I found that 3Com's solution was the best answer to our business needs in terms of investment and functionality," said Lars Henrik Søfren, Head of IT, Healthcare of Vest Sjaellands Amt, the local government body in charge of the hospitals.
“IT managers are increasingly looking into WLAN deployments. In the enterprise,issues like manageability and security play important roles, especially when wireless networks are integrated into the wired network of an enterprise and more applications run over a wireless network in the enterprise. IDC expects the enterprise WLAN equipment market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13% between 2004 and 2009, when it will be worth around $1 billion,” said Chris Barnard, IDC Research Director, European Telecommunications and Networking.
As a company, 3Com say they are committed to delivering open standards-based solutions, consistent with its enterprise strategy that spans from headquarters to remote offices of any company that has between hundreds and tens of thousands of employees worldwide.
Complementing and enhancing existing networks, 3Com solutions provide multi-vendor access point support and integration into a wireless mobility domain. Specifically, 3Com’s wireless switch system supports models of Cisco access points and Proxim access points. This approach is beneficial for customers, who can now leverage their existing access points from these other vendors and want to re-deploy them as part of a wireless switching system.
“We help enterprise customers maintain investment protection, which is a key benefit of open standards-based support,” said Rohit Mehra, director of enterprise wireless at 3Com. “We develop our wireless solutions along the lines of converging telephony and security over wireless and wired networks. By extending our wireless switch-based mobility systems to branch and remote offices, we are giving customers the benefits of wireless switching similar to the wireless capabilities of a headquarters office, yet without the higher cost or higher degree of complexity.”
The new products that are the cornerstone of the branch / remote office solution are the following:
3Com WXR100 Remote Office Wireless LAN Switch — The WXR100 wireless switch has a Web Quick Start function that allows small office installations to be up and running without needing more complex configuration tools often needed with other vendors’ products. It supports one to three managed access points per site and can be “drop-shipped” to branch offices or remote sites with no pre-configuration needed. The product also provides quality of service for delay-sensitive IP traffic through WiFi Multi-media (WMM), offers Power over Ethernet (PoE) and provides secure remote administration from centralized IT administration via the Wireless Switch Manager.