Xirrus Releases New Wi-Fi Client Management Tool for Windows

Free Xirrus® Wi-Fi Inspector™ Utility Provides Valuable Client Monitoring and Diagnostic Services

 

Xirrus, Inc., the Wi-Fi “Power-Play” that delivers the most wireless coverage, bandwidth, and throughput in the industry, announced today the release of the latest addition to its family of Wi-Fi utilities for Windows clients. Following on the success of the highly popular Wi-Fi Monitor gadget/widget tools – which together have achieved nearly two million downloads since 2007 – the Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector is a standalone application for managing and troubleshooting a laptop’s Wi-Fi connection in addition to scanning and monitoring the Wi-Fi environment.

The Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector is ideal for:

• Searching for and locating Wi-Fi networks
• Managing laptop Wi-Fi connections
• Troubleshooting Wi-Fi connectivity issues
• Verifying Wi-Fi coverage
• Detecting and locating rogue APs

One of the primary applications for the Wi-Fi Inspector is analyzing wireless user problems. IT managers or help desk staffers can direct users to run the utility – readily available as a free download over the Internet – to assist troubleshooting Wi-Fi connectivity and performance issues. As is the case with many users of the Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor gadgets/widgets, the Wi-Fi Inspector can be made part of the default image installed on corporate-managed laptops to be available when needed.

The Wi-Fi Inspector facilitates a 4-step process for analyzing a laptop’s Wi-Fi and network connection that can be easily executed by the end user:

1. Wireless Configuration – The Inspector displays whether the laptop is successfully connected wirelessly.

2. Network Configuration – The Inspector displays detailed IP addressing data indicating if the laptop is appropriately configured to communicate to the network and Internet.

3. Network Connectivity – The Inspector determines the state of the network connection by running a series of Ping tests to identify connectivity issues.

4. Network Performance – The Inspector determines the performance of the overall wireless and network connection by running a throughput test against an external Internet server.

Similar to the Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor utilities, the Wi-Fi Inspector scans the surrounding environment for Wi-Fi networks (SSIDs) using the client’s Wi-Fi adapter. The Wi-Fi network information is displayed in real-time graphically on a radar-like display as well as in a table format. Detailed information about each network is provided, including signal level, security level, Wi-Fi channel, AP equipment vendor, etc. From this display, Wi-Fi networks can be selected to connect to or disconnect from, or selected for more detailed analysis via signal level graphing and location functions.

The Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector – as well as all Wi-Fi Monitor gadget/widget tools – are available for download for free from the Xirrus website at http://www.xirrus.com/library/wifitools.php. The Wi-Fi Inspector runs on Windows Vista® and XP®. The Wi-Fi Monitor is available for Windows Vista, Windows XP, MacOS®, and Linux®.

Please go to www.xirrus.com for further information.

“*Guest Post* How Stuff Works – Frame Aggregation and Block ACKs”

This is a guest post for Xirrus employee, Douglas Haider. I have been in contact with Douglas ever since he started his blog. We both agreed that he could guest blog on HipTech101. Douglas blogs under the name “WiFi Jedi“. I have previously promoted his blog and if you haven’t seen it already, you can check it out at http://wifijedi.wordpress.com

“Greetings to the subscribers and readers of HipTech101! As advertised, I am the WiFi Jedi, and I have a blog about wireless networking and security located at http://wifijedi.wordpress.com In my blog, I have a series of posts called “How Stuff Works”. I have posted several times on technical improvements related to 802.11n and thought that I would continue that format here. For this post, I would like to discuss frame aggregation and block acknowledgement.

In normal 802.11 operation, each directed data and management must be acknowledged. This ACK takes the form of a 14 byte packet. This is shown in the top row of the graphic.

802.11n MAC Improvements

With frame aggregation, up to 64 MSDUs (MAC Serivce Data Units – essentialy layer 2 frames) can be sent at one time. This “super” fram has one physical layer header, then data frames (each with their own MAC header). Once all the data has been sent, a block acknowledgement is sent. This is shown in the bottom row of the graphic.

This is more efficient for several reasons. First, a physical layer header does not have to be transmitted for each data frame. Second, the block acknowledgement is much shorter than 64 separate ACKs. Third, there are far fewer interframe spaces as all the data is aggregated into one burst and all the acknowledgements are bundled together. Block Acknowledgements are also used under 802.11e Quality of Service.

Check out my blog at http://wifijedi.wordpress.com to see additional posts in my “How Stuff Works” series to include MIMO antennas, Spatial Multiplexing, and Channel Bonding.”

Expect more guest post to come!

WiFi Jedi Going Public

Xirrus employee, Douglas Haider, is now going public with his blog. I wanted to help promote it because I do frequent his writings and consider them to be insightful. If you know nothing about Wi-Fi and want to learn more, I suggest checking his blog.

http://wifijedi.wordpress.com/

Historic School Improves Connectivity for Students and Staff with 802.11n

Marymount High School Choose Xirrus® 802.11abgn Wi-Fi Arrays™ for Campus-wide Deployment

 

Xirrus, Inc., the Wi-Fi “Power-Play” that delivers the most wireless coverage, bandwidth, and throughput in the industry announced today that historic Marymount High School, located in Los Angeles, California, has deployed Xirrus 802.11n Wi-Fi Arrays campus-wide as they begin to roll out their 1:1 computer initiative.

Established in 1923, Marymount High School is an independent Catholic college-preparatory school for girls in grades 9-12. It’s seven building campus, located on a 6.5 acre campus across the street from UCLA, draws students from all over the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Marymount is one of the first all-girls school in the United States to begin deploying a 1:1 computer initiative with Apple® MacBook® computers.

“We selected Xirrus for our Wi-Fi implementation because they have the best architecture available—their Wi-Fi Arrays deliver more coverage, more bandwidth, and more throughput with less devices, cables, and switch ports than anything else on the market today,” said Patrick Lynch, Director of Technology, at Marymount High School. “As we roll-out our 1:1 computer initiative, it is imperative that we begin with a powerful, robust wireless network that will give all our 400+ student body and staff the same user experience as traditional wired connections—Xirrus delivers that.”

“What’s more, the professional and knowledgeable service we received from Xirrus was extraordinary,” added Patrick. “Unlike other vendors who try to sell based on slide-ware and predictive modeling, Xirrus cracked open their products to demonstrate the ingenious design, performed a real-world site survey, helped us create a comprehensive network design, and backed everything up with a signal strength guarantee. I think the most extraordinary thing about Xirrus was their follow up and follow through. From technicians, to site visits, to the roll out of our wireless solution, Xirrus has been there every step of the way to make sure the job got done right—very impressive.”

“It’s great to see schools like Marymount using Wi-Fi as the primary network connection for their students and staff—to learn and work where and when it is most productive,” said Scott Tomlinson, Regional Director at Xirrus. “Marymount now has a powerful 802.11abgn network that is as powerful as a Ethernet workgroup switch, but much more flexible and capable of supporting an assortment of wireless educational tools and applications both now and in the future.”

For this press release and many others, please click here.

Xirrus Announces PCI Compliance Enhancements to Wi-Fi Array Products

First Wireless Product for PCI Compliance Certified by VeriSign

 

Xirrus, Inc., the Wi-Fi “Power-Play” that delivers the most wireless coverage, bandwidth, and throughput in the industry announces VeriSign assessment of the new features that enforce PCI-compliant configurations for the Xirrus Wi-Fi Array product line.

Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards are worldwide technical and operational requirements that were created to help organizations that process card payments prevent fraud, hacking, and other various security vulnerabilities and threats. All members of the payment card industry, including financial institutions, credit card companies, merchants (retailers, hotels, etc.), and service companies must comply with these standards if they want to accept credit cards.

“To maintain a secure network and comply with the PCI standards, companies must ensure their Wi-Fi networks are secure and automatically protect both their company’s and their customer’s information,” said Kurt Sauter, Director of Corporate Initiatives. “The new Xirrus PCI audit mode, available in all Wi-Fi Arrays, ensures product configuration changes are compliant with PCI standards, disallows changes that would result in a non-PCI compliant configuration, and sends notifications that identify any product that does not meet the new requirements.”

New PCI-compliant implementations that use Wi-Fi are prohibited from using WEP starting March 31, 2009 and current wireless users are required to implement strong encryption such as 802.11i after June 30, 2010. The new features are available beginning in Xirrus ArrayOS software release 3.5 and include additional security features for ensuring the utmost in wireless security including:

Integrated and dedicated Wi-Fi Threat Sensor for continuous monitoring of the air

Integrated rules-based stateful firewall

Reprogrammable FPGA-based encryption engines

Integrated Spectrum Analyzer for DoS attacks and RF analysis

Advanced RADIUS/802.1x user and administrator authentication

Captive Web Portals for guest user authentication and control

Penetration-tested software and hardware platform

FIPS 140-2 Government security certification

“Xirrus is the first Wi-Fi vendor to take their products through VeriSign’s rigorous Security Certification Methodology,” said Katie Jenkins, Senior Consulting Manager responsible for VeriSign’s Security Certification Program. “Our program confirms that Xirrus has demonstrated that it has taken reasonable and appropriate steps to identify and manage information security risks and utilize PCI information security best practices for the evaluated Xirrus Wi-Fi Array products.

To view this press release and others, please proceed here.

Catholic Education Office Sandhurst Increases Network Efficiency with Xirrus

Xirrus, Inc., the Wi-Fi “Power-Play” that delivers the most wireless coverage, bandwidth, and throughput in the industry announced today the deployment of their 802.11abg+n Wi-Fi Arrays at the Catholic Education Office Sandhurst (CEO), which oversees the schools of the Sandhurst Catholic Diocese, Australia.

The Catholic Education Office Sandhurst provides services and support to the school in the Sandhurst Diocese. The Sandhurst Diocese has 43 Primary Schools and 11 Secondary Schools ranging in size from 16 to 550 students each.

“We wanted a high performance Wi-Fi network that would allow our staff to move around the office, but still have network connectivity, said Tom Sexton, Consultant: Facilities and Resources at the CEO. “We looked at several Wi-Fi vendors, but found them to lack in their ability to penetrate our thick brick walls and deliver the necessary bandwidth for out application needs. Besides being impressed with the performance at DOXA School and Galen Catholic College, they came when we called, installed the product quickly, and guaranteed the signal strength based on their real-world site survey.”

“Any organization looking to unfetter users from the desk should check out the Xirrus Wi-Fi Array—their 802.11n Wi-Fi Arrays offer the same user experience as wired, but without all the headaches and expenses involved with wired networks,” added Tom. “We have a Wi-Fi network that can support all of network traffic—from notebooks to handhelds…from Internet access to streaming video—the 11n Arrays handle it all.”

For the whole press release, please click here.

Galen Catholic College Increase Wi-Fi with Xirrus 802.11n Wi-Fi Arrays

Galen Catholic College is located three hours north of Melbourne, Australia with a history dating back to 1898. The school has 886 students. Located at Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia, Galen Catholic College chose to deploy 802.11n Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays to support their high performance applications and high-density classrooms.

Prior to the upgrade in 802.11n, last year GCC deployed Xirrus 802.11abg Arrays, so switching to n was easy. Xirrus has impressed everyone at Galen with their coverage and wired-like speed experience.

For the whole press release, please click here.

For more info on Xirrus, visit www.xirrus.com

Useful Wi-Fi Information on Xirrus.com

If you are looking for valuable and free information on Wi-Fi, look no further. Wi-Fi powerhouse Xirrus delivers valuable and free material that pertains to Wi-Fi. Not only can you find information that pertains to Xirrus and their products, but you can find vital information about Wi-Fi in general.

The Library page on the Xirrus website gives information on Wi-Fi in the form of reference posters, application notes, best practices, design guides, FAQs and more! I urge everyone to go there to learn more about Wi-Fi.

To go directly to the library page, please visit: http://www.xirrus.com/library/

Xirrus deploys at American School of Milan

Xirrus has just announced their deployment of 802.11abg+n Wi-Fi Arrays at the American School of Milan (ASM) in Milan, Italy. ASM upgraded their network to Xirrus 802.11n in order to provide greater capacity and bandwidth to their growing population of Wi-Fi users across their Milan Elementary and High Schools, including classrooms, science labs, library, cafeteria, and faculty offices.

ASM hosts over 600 students from 35 different countries. Their goal is to provide all of the students with an educational environment rich in technology, where students are able to discover and develop their abilities to achieve personal results of absolute excellence.

ASM’s growing population needed more wireless coverage and bandwidth, but the traditional access points started to become expensive and time consuming.

With the deployment of Xirrus, Stephen Reiach, Director of Technology at ASM, explains that “Xirrus got it right – by comibing the essential Wi-Fi components into a single device. ASM was able to install a powerful Wi-Fi network that distributes the intelligence and security clsoe to users while giving them central control of the network.

Check out the rest of the article at http://green.tmcnet.com/news/2008/12/16/3858556.htm

Or go to Xirrus at http://www.xirrus.com

Minervagymnasium Increases Wi-Fi Bandwidth 14X

Xirrus has just released a new press release.

Minervagymnasium, a 10-12 grade high school located on the campus of Umea Univeristy of Umea, Sweden has just switched from Apple Airport Extremes to Xirrus 8021.11 Wi-Fi Arrays. Their decision to switch to Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays lead to 14X more bandwidth and throughput for students and faculty throughout their facility.

Xirrus was able to provide Minervagymnasium with the most Wi-Fi bandwidth with the fewest amount of devices. The Arrays handled over 475 MacBooks and iPhones in a 4,100 square meter facility. Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays definitely amped up the bandwidth of Minervagymnasium!

You can check out the press release directly at http://www.xirrus.com/cgi-bin/press_releases.cgi?id=239&template=1