InformationWeek

July 7, 1997

Wireless LANs Mature

Products, standards add business appeal

By Beth Davis

ew products and a newly approved standard promise to make wireless LANs more attra ctive to business users. But it remains to be seen if these LANs will become more than niche solutions.

Market leader Proxim Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., is expected to unveil later this month additions to its RangeLAN2 suite of proprietary wireless LAN systems, including a version that lets users add wireless extensions to token-ring networks. Proxim will also announce a management system that lets administrators manage RangeLAN2 wireless systems from a Web browser.

Proxim also recently announced products it says will conform to the 802.11 wireless LAN standard ratified late last month by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The standards-based products are slated to ship in the third quarter. The lack of a standard has led to a market of expensive proprietary wireless LAN products that can't interoperate, industry experts say. While most agree the 802.11 standard will help, there are skeptics.

"The standard is fantastic news," says Dan Merriman, an analyst with Giga Informati on Group in Norwell, Mass. "But as with any specification, it's important to test interoperability between vendors' products."

The standard also doesn't address the speed limitations of wireless LANs, which generally offer only about 2 Mbps of throughput. But users do have alternatives. RadioLAN Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif., will roll out PC Cards this month that let users of its proprietary, peer-to-peer 10-Mbps wireless systems hook up notebooks and other portable computers.

"RadioLAN's 10-Mbps solution really works," says Craig Mathias, a principal at the Farpoint Group, an IT consulting firm in Ashland, Mass. "It's obviously important for them to have a mobile product. They're moving in the right direction."

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