ARUBA WIRELESS NETWORKS UNVEILS RF DIRECTOR™

First Complete RF Management Application Gives Enterprises the Power to Secure and Control Changing RF Environments

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA, August 11, 2003 - Aruba Wireless Networks today introduced RF Director™, the first-of-its-kind RF management application with all the essential tools to plan, secure and optimize 802.11 wireless networks. These tools include RF Plan™, RF Analyze™, RF Lock™ (see related release), and third-party RF Plug-Ins™.

RF Director is Aruba’s umbrella platform for providing Aruba WLAN switch management tools and a launch pad for value-added RF management modules and third-party applications. From a single dashboard, RF Director now empowers enterprises to:

• plan the deployment of AP without cumbersome and expensive site surveys
• calibrate the wireless environment for complete RF optimization
• gather detailed traffic statistics that can be quickly analyzed
• monitor RF activity for simplified, remote troubleshooting and
• set sophisticated RF security policies that proactively prevent malicious use of the wireless network.

“Network managers like to listen to radios not manage them,” said Keerti Melkote, co-founder and vice president of Product Management and Marketing at Aruba Wireless Networks. “RF Director, for the first time, brings together a set of indispensable RF management tools to control the vagaries of wireless networks.”

Available immediately, RF Director provides basic fault configuration, accounting and performance (FCAPs) functions along with advanced RF management delivered through specific RF modules including RF Plan, RF Lock, RF Analyze and third-party RF Plug-Ins.

Aruba’s RF Plan Eliminates RF Guess Work

While emerging “virtual” site surveys let administrators determine where to place access points (APs), they don’t adapt to real-time changes that occur within the RF environment. These tools only provide a static snapshot of how best to construct a wireless environment at a given point in time.

Coupled with the fact that most IT staff don’t have a complete understanding of the interaction between radio waves and building construction or the detailed knowledge of where every RF obstacle (such as concrete walls, metal doors) is located, determining the optimal RF environment has remained a mystery.

Aruba’s RF Plan solves these problems with a 3D modeling tool that works in concert with Aruba’s AirOS to let network managers quickly build a self-configuring Wi-Fi environment.

Once a baseline set of parameters is input into RF Plan, the system provides a complete coverage map for access points and air monitors. Once deployed the Aruba system then calibrates the environment (continually or at pre-determined times) to ensure that as changes occur, the RF environment remains perfectly tuned.

Aruba’s RF Lock Proactively Protects Against Unwanted Wi-Fi Intruders

RF Lock (see separate release) gives enterprises advanced RF security such as rogue AP detection, classification and destruction, honeypot protection, and association and de-authentication flood protection not found in traditional 802.11 access points and wireless appliances.

Central to RF Lock is a set of patent-pending algorithms that classify any unknown AP or station as part of an enterprise network or an outside network in a shared space environment.

RF Lock also helps administrators ensure that all legacy access points are properly configured with valid security and mobility profiles so no security holes are created in the network due to misconfiguration. RF Lock lets administrators implement WLAN intrusion detection functionality for common attacks such as fake AP, monkey jack, ESSID jack and Netstumbler attacks.

Aruba’s RF Analyze Captures Real-Time Wi-Fi Information for Remote Troubleshooting

RF Analyze is a real-time RF monitoring and packet capture tool that gives administrators detailed information about the entire Wi-Fi environment.

With RF Analyze administrators can now quickly obtain, on a per- station, channel or AP basis, a variety of detailed aggregate and raw statistics such as frame retries, fragmentation rates, frame errors, bandwidth rates, frame receive errors (indication of interference), as well as packet or byte counts, frame sizes, frame transmit rates, frame types, physical errors or MAC errors. These statistics can be graphed over specific time periods.

Aruba’s RF Analyze module can be configured to generate threshold–based events on these statistics. Syslog messages and SNMP traps are generated when configured thresholds are crossed. This information can be used for reports that, for instance, detail top talkers or top congested APs. All statistics are available via SNMP and are easily integrated into third-party trending, capacity and performance management systems or standard wireless analysis applications.

Third-Party RF Plug-Ins Open the Door for Future RF Services

As part of RF Director, Aruba will provide third-party tools that can be launched directly from Aruba’s RF Director console and engineered to take in alarms, events and packets from Aruba’s family of WLAN switches. These RF Plug-Ins make it easy for IT staff, in a single location, to highly customize their RF management. The first RF Plug-In, available under RF Director, is AiroPeek NX™.

In partnership with WildPackets, Inc., a leading provider of network analysis solutions and services, Aruba will offer the AiroPeek NX RF Plug-In for companies that want advanced Wi-Fi traffic analysis. The AiroPeek NX RF Plug-In features advanced security audit features, powerful problem detection heuristics and 802.11-specific expert diagnostic capabilities.

“The integration of AiroPeek NX under Aruba’s RF Director allows our customers to marry the best wireless analysis tools into emerging centralized wireless LAN architectures,” said Mahboud Zabetian, president and CEO of WildPackets. “The value of a centralized WLAN architecture is clear, making the need for advanced wireless and RF analysis tools even greater.”

Pricing and Availability

Available immediately, Aruba’s RF Director application is free and comes integrated with every Aruba WLAN switching system. Also available immediately, Aruba’s RF-modules including RF Lock, RF Analyze and RF Plan are priced at US$10,000, $3,000 and $2,000 respectively. The AiroPeek NX RF Plug-In will be available in August and will be downloadable from WildPackets in the future.

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