Cisco 3300 Series

Dubbed the "Mobility Services Engine" by the vendor, the 3300 series appliances from Cisco provide an open abstraction layer between network applications and the actual physical network transports required to reach the endpoints; supporting the abstracted delivery of application logic to end-devices across such communications mediums as Wi-Fi, Ethernet, cellular, WiMAX, and RFID.

The initial appliance in the series is the 3350, which boasts dual quad-core Intel Xeon processors (2.33 GHz), 8 GB of RAM, dual (hot-swappable) 147 GB drives, and dual, embedded Gb NICs with TCP/IP offload. As an extension of the vendors' Unified Wireless Network architecture, the services provided by the appliance can be managed by the Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS), and supported devices include various Cisco WAN controllers (2100/4400 series, Catalyst 6500 series WSM; Catalyst 3750G Integrated Wireless LAN Controller; WLCM and WLCM-E for Integrated Services Routers) as well as the Cisco Aironet APs.

But the key feature of the appliance is the open, SOAP and XML based API that can be used by third party partners to craft applications that interact with the services provided by the appliance and thus enable those applications to "speak" a centralized language to multiple downstream devices across differing network topologies. The services offered by the appliance are in actuality separately licensed software modules; with the vendor listing four such products on the initial service roadmap:

- Context Aware software, which enables the capture of context information from Wi-Fi devices and tags for use in business processes; including such context information as location, temperature (from sensors), availability, etc. Up to 18,000 devices are supported by the software.

- Adaptive Wireless IPS, which leverages network analysis and signature-based algorithms to provide wireless threat detection and mitigation features (rogue AP detection, wireless DoS, etc.). This module also supports up to 18,000 devices.

- Mobile Intelligent Roaming for transparent handoffs between Wi-Fi and cellular networks on compatible end-user gear.

- Secure Client Manager, which provides for the management and provisioning of mobile devices via the vendor's 802.1x based Secure Services Client.

The 3350 appliance itself is expected to be available in June (with a starting price of $19,995), as is the Context Aware software. The Wireless IPS and the Mobile Intelligent Roaming software are slated for the second half of 2008; while the Secure Client Manager is due in the first half of 2009.

Visit the Cisco Systems Web site for further information.