AirMagnet Ships Latest Wireless Security Solution For Laptops, Handhelds

AirMagnet Mobile 4.0 includes 20 new features, such as voice-over-WLAN troubleshooting tools, expanded authentication support and policy management, said Rich Mironov, vice president of marketing at AirMagnet, Sunnyvale, Calif. Among the tools in the upgrade are a new Jitter Tool that monitors the level of variation in frequency to help prevent connection failures, as well as a Roaming Tool that tracks time delay as users move between access points. The new authentication support includes major WLAN authentication mechanisms now used in the market plus support of key 802.11i features, Mironov said.

Eric Winegar, president of NLE, a Salt Lake City-based wireless solution provider, said AirMagnet Mobile 4.0 punctuates AirMagnet's flexibility in keeping up with rapidly evolving wireless networking standards. "[AirMagnet] is watching [VoIP] a lot closer than they have, so we are really encouraged by this release," Winegar said. "There's definitely more demand [for voice-over-Wi-Fi], but you can't comfortably do it without these kinds of tools."

Jitter and latency issues are inherent in Wi-Fi and can be the kiss of death in wireless solutions, Winegar said. He credited AirMagnet for focusing on those issues and providing tools in AirMagnet Mobile 4.0 to help address them.

AirMagnet Mobile 4.0 software is priced at about $3,500 for laptops and $3,000 for handhelds, according to the company. The software is a free upgrade for existing customers.