The results of the second-annual Webtorials “Wireless LAN
State-of-the-Market Report” have just been published, revealing
a mélange of enterprise trends, some expected, others not.
The report, sponsored this year by Colubris Networks, analyzes
responses from 419 subscribers to Webtorials, an educational Web
site for the computer networking industry. Of those responding,
over one-third were network managers learning to manage a
business Wi-Fi environment (as opposed to classifying themselves
as wireless experts or home users/hobbyists), and more than
one-third worked for companies with 2,000 or more employees.
About half worked in North America and half worked in other
parts of the world.
The survey indicates good news and bad news about the state of
WLAN security. First, the good news: More than one-third of the
survey-takers stated they believe that most WLAN security
problems have been solved with technology, such as the 802.11i
suite of security extensions and vendor-proprietary solutions.
The not-so-good news is that “security concerns” remain the
top-ranking challenge to deploying WLANs in the enterprise.
Accounting for this seeming discrepancy is that about 24% of the
survey base also stated they don’t feel confident about properly
implementing the security measures available to them for optimum
benefit.
In other words, it would seem that while implementers believe
the technology and solutions have been created to keep Wi-Fi
networks secure, their confidence levels in deploying and
maintaining those solutions properly to keep the bad guys out
haven’t caught up yet.
As mentioned last time in my “sneak peek,” results indicate that
from an architecture perspective, the enterprise trend appears
to be toward use of intelligent access points with some
centralized management (55%); though one-third of the response
base said they’d use thin access points with WLAN switches, and
another third said they’d use stand-alone intelligent access
points. Survey-takers were allowed to check all infrastructures
that would apply to their environment. Note, too, that mesh
Wi-Fi hit the radar screen with a respectable 16%.
