The Cisco executives acknowledged that the new system will only work Cisco's Aironet access points (APs) and that the company would not offer so-called thin access points, which have no built-in intelligence. Cisco executives said that the access points in its new system need built-in intelligence for tasks such as authenticating users at the edge of the network instead of centrally and to help detect rogue access points.
One analyst said that the insistence on use of its own APs in this system was not surprising.
"They're Cisco and they're not about interoperability," said Phil Solis, a senior analyst for ABI Research.
Cisco has been under fire from startup wireless switch operators and had not provided similar centralized wireless network functionality until Wednesday's announcement. The wireless switch vendors lately have talked about how their products are needed for voice-over-WLAN (VoWLAN) deployments because they speed hand-offs between access points as users roam. However, Cisco executives discounted that notion.
"We're looking at a 50 millisecond hand-off," said Douglas Gourlay, marketing manager for the Catalyst 6500 group. "That's not disruptive. You wouldn't hear a blip."
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