Foundry joins wireless Lan party

Networking supplier will ship through its channel from next month

Networking supplier Foundry Networks will begin shipping its first wireless local area network (Lan) next month. It will be possible to integrate the system with Foundry's existing products.

Although Foundry has built up a good reputation for its range of Ethernet networking products, this is the company's first move into the increasingly crowded wireless market.

The IronPoint wireless product supports the range of 802.11 standards on the market (a, b and g) and can be bought as a stand-alone product or as an integrated switch system for larger installations.

The vendor will ship through its channel, and new features will be added over the next few months.

The firm has claimed the product is more cost-effective than others on the market, and that the attraction for its channel is that IronPoint can be integrated with existing Foundry switches, simplifying management.

Phil Kwan, director of enterprise applications at Foundry, claimed the firm came deliberately late to the wireless market, allowing standards to evolve and giving it time to "sit back and design a best-fit solution".

But in the past Foundry has shipped products before standards were finalised; most notably for 10Gigabit Ethernet.

Jon Collins, senior analyst at Quocirca, said it was important for Foundry to have a wireless offering, and claimed many customers would rather stick with their wired networking supplier for ease of integration.

"Customers are looking for compatibility with existing equipment," Collins said. "So they will be keen to work with their existing provider."

Anne-Marie Collins, director at PowerIT Education, said she was seeing little demand for wireless Lan training.

"In the UK there's still a lot of push-back on training. They're still taking the manufacturers' training route," she said.

"A lot of people think wireless Lans are easy until they come to enhance the environment they are working in."