Date: 19/05/2009
Broadcom offering couple of chips and software for developing 802.11n WLAN systems
Broadcom is offering two SoC class semiconductor devices and a switching software for developing complete Wireless LAN network system compliant with IEEE 802.11n wireless LAN standards.
This complete software and silicon solution benefits OEMs to replace older version of WLAN devices and systems supporting only IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g protocols with the inevitable IEEE 802.11n compliant devices.
Broadcom says, this new solution unifies both wired and wireless infrastructure so that the data packets while changing their physical media remains much the same without creating and bandwidth bottlenecks.
This solution includes the Broadcom BCM56520 unified wireless switch, the Intensi-fi BCM4748 802.11n access point (AP) system-on-a-chip (SoC) with Accelerange technology, and FASTPATH Unified Wireless Switching (UWS) 6.0 software optimized for unified wireless switching and unified wireless access points.
The BCM56520 Unified Wireless/Wireline Switch: The new BCM56520 is the unified wireless/wireline switch with up to 28 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports and six HiGig2 ports.
The BCM4748 Integrated 802.11n AP SoC: This device packs 802.11n medium access controller (MAC), a baseband processor, a dual-band radio, a MIPS74K CPU, a GbE MAC, power amplifiers and other WLAN components. BCM4748 also enables simultaneous dual-band 802.11n APs to be powered using existing Power over Ethernet (PoE) infrastructure without having to add extra ports to support dual-mode operation or upgrading to PoE+ capabilities.
FASTPATH Unified Wireless Switching and Unified Access Point Software: The latest version, FASTPATH 6.0, incorporates wireless virtualization software that enables centralized management for unified edge switching (rather than controller-based switching). This enables managing the entire WLAN through one switch interface but the duties are actually distributed to all the switches in the network.
The latest release of FASTPATH software is optimized to drive wireless voice in the enterprise and supports additional capabilities necessary for enterprise-grade voice over WLAN (VoWLAN). FASTPATH UWS is also available in source code format, helping OEMs to integrate Broadcom networking software into their existing internal switching operating system or use it as a standalone system.
Little market analysis data on WLAN access point market:
According to ABI Research, the 802.11n access point market is expected to reach 14 million units by 2014, up from less than a million units in 2008.
Broadcom executive's praising comments on this solution:
"While 802.11n improves Wi-Fi performance and expands wireless connectivity into new applications, it requires a new unified network architecture to avoid inefficiencies and traffic bottlenecks," said Martin Lund, Vice President & General Manager of Broadcom's Networking Switching Business Unit. "Our expertise in wired and wireless networks makes us uniquely positioned to address this challenge. Not only are we the first to develop the silicon building blocks necessary for a unified network architecture, we are also the only vendor with software specifically designed to support it. With a unified wireless network, all of the performance, scalability and expense benefits of the traditional wired network are now available to support wireless traffic."