On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Allen Fear wrote: ... > Does anyone have any idea how this will affect security going forward? Could > Cisco try to leverage this as a way to force LEAP onto the market as the de > facto standard?
That would be my bet. Cisco has had LEAP for a while as a relatively good EAP/802.1x method but IEEE TGi has been (very) slow in coming out with 802.11i leaving all of us implementers in a really, really bad position. People are buying the home Linksys stuff and bringing it back to the enterprise to be told by their MIS guys "sorry, that won't work on the secure corporate WiFi network". The rest of us implement with VPN and L7 encryption which is far from perfect on wireless. Cisco now has a LEAP partners program that seems to be well under way http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partners/pr46/pr147/partners_pgm_partners_list.html You can bet that once Linksys starts shipping LEAP, others will have to follow. That includes all the other mass market vendors such as Dlink and friends. That's how you create defacto standards. Meanwhile IEEE TGi is still dancing around trying to decide what to really work on (as of today still, talking about splitting up TGI into two PARs .... sigh!!!). They should be shipping TKIP with basic key rotation NOW for WPA and by the time they are ready with "version 2" we will all be ready for AES/CCMP with better protection for DOS on the newer dual A/G hardware. The problem with TGi I think is they underestimate the need for this stuff NOW. They should also make TKIP support mandatory in 802.11i The last time I looked it was "optional" making it a nightmare and next to worthless for implementer because it means that some standards-based products don't work. I don't think Cisco will kill Linksys, they operate in two different markets, large enterprise will continue to deploy Cisco APS (AP1100/1200) because of the better management, VLAN support, etc. The Linksys will continue to dominate in the SOHO/SMB environments. Linksys has been an amazing company on the low-end. Combine that with the leader on the high end and you can see why they spent that much money on Linksys. You don't spend half a billion(!) to kill a company - they will likely learn a lot from the Linksys operating/manufacturing model and you will likely see this as a positive to bring down manufacturing costs on the enterprise products. They plan on keeping the Linksys brand name, something they have never done in the past with other acquisitions. This is a different market and they know it. This is very good new for us (a large Cisco AP installation). Now, if we can only get Microsoft to work with Cisco on supporting wireless VLANs properly, we'll be in a very good shape. :-) Jonn Martell, UBC Wireless > Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 10:54:10 -0800 > From: Allen Fear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [BAWUG] Cisco buying Linksys > > > The brand, marketing, and distribution channels are mostly what Cisco is > getting for their $500 mil, not including the elimination of what would > otherwise be their biggest competitor in this space. They won't be taking a > wrecking ball to that any time soon. I wonder if this will prompt Huawei to > snap up Buffalo. > > Does anyone have any idea how this will affect security going forward? Could > Cisco try to leverage this as a way to force LEAP onto the market as the de > facto standard? > > Allen > > On Fri, 21 Mar 2003 07:49:39 -0800, raines wrote > > I imagine they'll keep the brands separate for quite some time, as > > the markets are so different and the overlap small between high-end > > LinkSys and low-end Cisco. > > > > Raines > > -- > > general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> > > [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > > > > -- > general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> > [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
