Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Lynnette Luna

“What changed is primarily the competitive marketplace, and Cisco [Systems] has legitimized it,” said Stan Schatt, vice president and research director for ABI Research.

“It's clear to me that there are certain verticals that have been historically early adopters of Wi-Fi and all of the refinements of Wi-Fi, including VoIP,” Schatt said. For instance, hospitals rely heavily on Wi-Fi voice-over-IP services, which require higher bandwidth, as do emerging technologies such as telemedicine. Universities also want to provide high-bandwidth services in lecture halls to enable large numbers of students to access the Internet while the professor is lecturing, Schatt said.

Indeed, in July Morrisville State College in New York selected Meru Networks' 802.11n wireless system for campus-wide deployment. Meanwhile, Carnegie Mellon University has rolled out Aruba's 802.11n adaptive wireless LANs across its Pittsburgh campus. The university will use the network as a complement to its wired network but is eyeing it as a replacement for some of the applications now used on campus. Aruba also plans to announce a deal with Cornell University in mid-December. Tennefoss said Cornell was planning to upgrade many areas of the university to gigabit Ethernet, but opted instead for 802.11n. Doing so will save $20 million.

Meru said it plans to announce a number of customers shortly in verticals such as health care, retail education and hospitality. “We have a situation where we are often not able to meet customer demand for 802.11n,” said Girish Baht, director of enterprise solutions for Meru.

Colubris Networks recently surveyed 200 senior IT professionals from medium to large businesses across a wide range of industries, including health care, education, manufacturing and financial services, about their interest in 802.11n. According to the vendor, 44% already had plans to deploy 802.11n networks, while nearly one-third planned to replace their wired networks with 802.11n.

But deploying such networks isn't simply a matter of replacing existing Wi-Fi access points with 802.11n access points. The migration to 802.11n requires new end-user clients, upgraded switches and controller equipment, as well as gigabit Ethernet rewiring in most cases to handle the additional data throughput, said Roberta Wiggins, research fellow for Yankee Group.

However, Cisco's Kozup said enterprises could upgrade this equipment over time, because end-user equipment will drive the traffic. Consequently, most enterprises won't see a plethora of 802.11n devices flooding the network for some time, as the client refresh rate runs about 20-30% every year, he said.

Most enterprises will incrementally deploy 802.11n because of the capital expenditure involved, vendors say. Cisco, which is still relatively new to full-scale manufacturing of 802.11n equipment, is seeing a number of greenfield deployments from enterprises looking to deploy the technology in areas where they previously didn't have wireless coverage, Kozup said.

“The migration will not happen overnight,” Tennefoss said. “How it will be deployed depends on the budget.”

Meru recently introduced its Video Unplugged Program, a video-over-WLAN partner program that tests and certifies multivendor video products for interoperability over a company's enterprise wireless network. The program's goal is to certify video products and guarantee the quality of service of the technologies that run over the WLAN. Bhat said 802.11n is one of the reasons why the company announced the video program, as the access points provide better throughput and quality of service.

“This opens a whole slew of applications that were just not possible before with 802.11g and 802.11a networks,” Bhat said. For instance, an enterprise wanting streaming video could update a few access points where it believes video will be used the most.

In the end, however, enterprises are still taking a risk moving forward with equipment that still doesn't have the final standard behind it, Schatt said. Vendors have been working to alleviate those concerns by claiming that any upgrade will likely be a software upgrade, and Cisco says any hardware upgrades can be done by swapping out radio modules. But there are no guarantees.

“I don't think any vendor could make a 100% guarantee that technology you buy today will be compatible with the final standard,” Kozup said. “[But] we have confidence through software that we will be able to upgrade to the final specification.”

Schatt, however, said only the very small Wi-Fi vendors are guaranteeing to upgrade their customers for free if the upgrade involves more than a firmware upgrade. The major enterprise players have been unwilling to do that, citing liability issues.

“I think it's telling that none of the vendors will commit to that with their customers,” Schatt said.

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