Symbol Suite Monitors Wireless Networks

The suite is designed to slash the time it takes to deploy complex, mobile infrastructure solutions and increase the visibility of device and wireless network performance.

The MSS includes the Mobility Services Platform, Mobility Services Agents and MSS Studio.

The Mobility Services Platform, a rack-mountable appliance, provides server-side control of mobile deployments by communicating with the agents, which collect monitoring and asset information and reside on all of Symbol's mobile devices.

Symbol is also set to release the WS 5000 Wireless Switch software, which converts legacy Symbol IEEE 802.11 frequency-hopping and Wi-Fi access points to operate over Symbol's wireless switch architecture.

The MSS Studio enables the development of applications that extend back-end applications to a larger variety of mobile computing devices.

Other wireless networking vendors were also set to kick off N I with products.

Airespace, a WLAN switching vendor based in San Jose, Calif., is taking the wrapper off a new Intelligent RF Access Point that leverages smart antenna technology and enhances AireWave Director Software.

The access point features simultaneous air monitoring and traffic delivery, MAC-layer encryption, including support for 802.11i and 802.11e, Power over Ethernet, multimode support for 802.11a/b/g, automatic WLAN association, channel assignment, power control and software upgrades. The new access point also includes failover to backup WLAN switches and appliances using the LWAPP (Light Weight Access Point Protocol) specification.

Airespace also planned to introduce a new Airespace Wireless Location Services suite that includes location tracking software, a stand-alone location application, new Airespace application programming interfaces and an active RFID transceiver.

Jeff Aaron, senior product marketing manager for Airespace, said both new products will become available during the third quarter of 2004, with pricing yet to be determined.

Senforce Technologies, a mobile security vendor based in Orem, Utah, planned to introduce new storage device control features in its Enterprise Mobile Security Manager 2.5.

Kip Meacham, director of technical marketing for Senforce, said the new functionality will prevent theft of data from mobile computers. He said pricing varies depending upon the scale of deployment, but initial per-seat pricing starts at $89.95.

AirDefense, a WLAN security vendor based in Alpharetta, Ga., said it would launch a Bluetooth monitoring solution dubbed BlueWatch.

AirDefense's BlueWatch runs on a standard Windows XP or Windows 2000 platform and monitors the airwaves to locate different types of Bluetooth devices, including laptops, PDAs, keyboards and cell phones.