Fixed Wireless Equipment

3COM Upgrades Wireless Bridge

3Com's Wireless LAN Building-to-Building Bridge promises compatibility with any Wi-Fi certified access point and offers additional throughput and range.

by Wayne Kawamoto [July 23, 2002]

3Com Corporation recently announced its 3Com Wireless LAN Building-to-Building Bridge-an enhanced bridging solution that may be the first to be compatible with any Wi-Fi certified access point. The company says that its bridging solution, to be released in August, should allow it to easily fit within a multi-vendor wireless infrastructure.

The 3Com Wireless LAN Building-to-Building Bridge is the latest addition to 3Com's line of wireless LAN solutions, which includes the Access Point 8000 for larger networks, the Access Point 6000 for organizations that have less rigorous needs and limited IT staff, and the Access Point 2000 for SOHO and remote branch office users.

The new bridge is an updated version of the original launched in June 2001, and now supports a distance of up to 15 miles at 11 Mbps. Organizations should be able to set up the wireless bridge in point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations covering distances of 300 meters up to 20,000 meters depending upon the antenna used.

To keep wireless information secure, the 3Com Wireless LAN Building-to-Building Bridge supports both 40-bit and 128-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). The wireless bridge is designed to be transparent to Virtual Private Network protocols, using a special encapsulation protocol to avoid conflicts with other tunneling protocols.

Organizations may gain advanced management and security features when using the new wireless bridge with other 3Com products. For example, when paired with the 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4400, the bridge should identify and set priorities for network traffic based on application, and ensure that business-critical traffic gets to its wireless destination in a specified time. By using 3Com Network Supervisor, network managers should be able to configure wireless devices and distribute software upgrades simultaneous to multiple wireless devices. Also, an enhanced security feature should give each user a unique key and change the key with every session, making it a resilient security solution.

"Wireless networking gives organizations a reliable way to link an increasingly mobile and dynamic workforce," said Patrick Guay, vice president and general manager, LAN Infrastructure Division, 3Com's Business Networks Company. "With the new 3Com Wireless LAN Building-to-Building Bridge, organizations can now link multiple buildings in a campus over a greater distance, and in a simpler way, while taking advantage of powerful features including security and network management enhancements."

Pricing and availability
The 3Com Wireless LAN Building-to-Building Bridge is expected to be available worldwide in early August. The product is priced at $990 (U.S. list), not including antennas and cables.

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