Wireless comms firm Symbol, acquired by Motorola, has been first to bridge the gap between radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and standard wireless comms such as Wi-Fi.

Symbol said its RFS7000 RF switch aims “to support and consolidate Wi-Fi and emerging RF technologies such as RFID, 802.11n, mesh, Voice over Wireless LAN [VoWLAN] and WiMax”.

Symbol said it is targeting firms looking to converge infrastructures beyond voice, video and data. It said the device “enables central management of Wi-Fi and RFID readers and allows easy access to business logic and back-end applications”.

The modular 802.11g/n architecture of the switch runs under Linux to give separate infrastructure, services, application and management layers. It can support up to 256 802.11a/b/g access points (APs), Symbol said, can be clustered for redundancy and can scale to over 2,000 APs.

The vendor said the switch can also take optional add-on modules, for instance to support fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) for dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi handheld devices. Layer 3 roaming is also supported. Firms can avoid investing in additional external applications and third-party servers to handle large-scale campus-wide deployments.

But corporate take-up of Wi-Fi/VoWLAN is low, said virtual network operator Sirocom’s business development director Barrie Desmond. And as 802.11n interoperability testing has yet to be completed and UK WiMax rollouts are rare, the enterprise market for the switch could be low.

The switch will be available from early next year.

‹ www.symbol.com