WLAN Switch Start-ups BelAir, Legra Secure Funding

BelAir Networks, (Reston, VA) raised $15 million in Series B financing, bringing the total investment in the developer of cellular LAN platforms to $22 million.

The new investment will be used to bring the BelAir200 cellular LAN platform introduced in October to volume production, further develop marketing and sales channels, develop the support infrastructure required to meet demand, and accelerate the development of future products.

The second round financing was led by JPMorgan Partners and included previous investors VenGrowth Capital Partners Inc., BDC Venture Capital, and Dr Adam Chowaniec, chairman of Tundra Semiconductors.

"BelAir Networks is the leading vendor of carrier class Wi-Fi systems, offering products that fundamentally change the business model for Wi-Fi access," said JPMorgan Partners Principal Chris Albinson who will join the BelAir Networks board of directors as a result of this financing

BelAir Networks' cellular LAN is built on a patented, multiple point-to-point wireless mesh that integrates wireless access and backhaul and is claimed to provide more coverage and capacity for data, video and voice services than other options.

Meanwhile WLAN switch hopeful Legra Systems (Burlington, Mass.) closed a series B round valued at $12 million, bringing total funding for the company to $20.5 million.

New investor Duchossois TECnology Partners led the round that included participation from all Series A investors, including Kodiak Venture Partners and Genesis Partners.

The capital raised will be used to further develop Legra's security-focused WLAN switch.

"This investment strengthens our financial position as we aggressively roll out our WLAN solution to our enterprise customers," said David Tolwinski, President and CEO of Legra Systems. "We built our WLAN solution to meet the critical requirements of the enterprise network of today and tomorrow, developing a wireless switching system with robust end-to-end security, high performance and future-proof extensibility".

Tolwinski added the company will soon announce a channel partner program. Legra has started shipping its first switch, that features the 'Parallel Priority Cryptography (PPC)' chip which allows the system to combine priority switching and priority cryptography on a single platform. The switch was also one of the first to achieve WPA certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance.

This story courtesy of TechWeb .