News | October 28, 2008

Bluesocket Tops Network World Enterprise 802.11n Clear Choice Comparative Test

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bluesocket, Inc., the leader in trusted wireless access and enterprise mobility, today announced that its BlueSecure 802.11n solution has been named Best Overall Product in the Network World Enterprise 802.11n Clear Choice comparative test. The evaluation, which tested 802.11n products from competing vendors, found that the Bluesocket solution outperformed the competition in key areas such as overall Quality of Service, latency, jitter and power consumption, receiving a "most robust system tested" rating.

With a goal of determining 802.11n performance in an enterprise context, Network World invited all enterprise Wi-Fi vendors to participate in what has been billed as the largest public 802.11n test ever conducted. Working with test instrument vendor VeriWave and implemented by Network World, test cases were designed to measure traffic from hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of virtual clients to measure scalability and performance in both pure 802.11n settings and with a mix of 802.11n and legacy clients.

Receiving the highest rating (4.05 out of 5) of all vendors tested, the Bluesocket 802.11n solution excelled in the following areas:

  • VeriWave WiMix™ Performance – In WiMix testing designed to measure Quality of Service (QoS), application layer Service Level Agreements and end-user Quality of Experience (QoE), the Bluesocket solution outpaced the competition across a number of key performance metrics. Delivering 141Mbps of traffic per radio in a test that ran both radios of the BSAP-1800 concurrently – 5GHz in 40Mhz and 2.4GHz in 20MHz mode – applying multiple and increasing flows of voice, video and data traffic "the Bluesocket system handled the highest WiMix load without violating SLAs for any traffic class" and "supported more concurrent phone calls than any other system tested", displaying a superior performance level primed for next-generation wireless applications.
  • Power over Ethernet (PoE) Consumption – Test results report that the BSAP-1800 provided full 3x3 MIMO performance while drawing less than 11 watts of power with a single 802.3af compliant PoE connection. Unlike other solutions which require multiple PoE ports or deliver reduced features based on high power needs, the BSAP-1800 delivers a full feature single PoE solution as advertised. According to Network World, Bluesocket's access points were also "among the greenest" tested, negating the need for customers to upgrade their 802.3af PoE infrastructure when moving to 802.11n.
  • Throughput & Latency – In tests measuring throughput across a varying number of access points moving traffic between wired and wireless clients, Bluesocket's APs maintained minimum latency and jitter when exposed to high enterprise-level traffic – both alone, and with multiple non-802.11n clients. According to the published results "Bluesocket's access points delayed packets the shortest amount of time in most of the downlink and uplink tests, often by wide margins over other access points for downstream traffic. Also "the difference between average and maximum delay was generally lower for Bluesocket access points than for those from other vendors."

"Network World's evaluation results reflect what we set out to achieve - a uniquely flexible and scalable 802.11n solution that provides a superior user experience and allows customers to transition to newer wireless standards as applications and users require it," said Mads Lillelund, CEO at Bluesocket. "Our experience in developing industry-leading mobility technology clearly stood out in this head-to-head evaluation. We're proud to deliver a superior product to our customers while raising the bar for industry solutions that further propel innovation."

According to Network World's review: Big players missing in action, Aruba Networks, Cisco and Trapeze Networks declined to take part in this neutral third-party test, prompting Network World to "wonder how ready their 802.11n offerings actually are." As noted, "When assessing gear from vendors that didn't participate, we [Network World] believe it's reasonable for enterprises to ask about that unwillingness."

The 802.11n-ready BlueSecure software platform and Bluesocket's family of 802.11n-ready WLAN products lays the foundation for emerging high-speed wireless networks, providing end users with the optimal mix of security, control and QoS to support advanced network-based applications.

For more on the BSAP-1800 and Bluesocket's entire 802.11n-ready BlueSecure product family, please contact your preferred Bluesocket reseller or call Bluesocket Sales at 866-633-3358.

About Bluesocket

Founded in 1999, Bluesocket is a leader in open, standards based enterprise mobility solutions. Its industry-leading wireless LAN products deliver secure mobility to thousands of customers across the education, enterprise, government, healthcare and hospitality markets. Bluesocket's complete wireless network solution portfolio brings trust and simplicity to increasingly complex wireless networks maximizing customer ROI and increasing their competitive edge. For more information, please visit http://www.bluesocket.com.

Bluesocket, the Bluesocket logo, BlueProtect and BlueSecure are trademarks or registered trademarks of Bluesocket, Inc. All other trademarks, trade names and company names referenced herein are used for identification only and are the property of their respective companies.

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