SAN JOSE, Calif., July 22, 2005 - Cisco Systems® today announced the availability of the new Cisco 4400 Series Wireless Local Area Network (LAN) Controller, capable of intelligently supporting up to 100 access points per controller with complete system level resiliency.

Ideal for large-scale deployments, the Cisco 4400 Series Controller expands Cisco's current portfolio of WLAN controllers to address the widest range of deployment scenarios - from remote and branch offices to expansive enterprise campuses with thousands of access points. The Cisco 4400 incorporates all of the same real-time radio frequency (RF) management, wireless intrusion protection, mobility, and quality of service (QoS) capabilities inherent to Cisco's award-winning family of WLAN controllers, making it an ideal platform to deliver consistent, reliable and secure wireless LAN services to large numbers of mobile users.

"With the 4400, Cisco has delivered a high-quality, high performing WLAN controller in the market with an eye toward non-blocking, business critical performance and throughput," said Alan S. Cohen, senior director, product management at Cisco Systems. "With market-leading scaling and clustering, the 4400 provides additional options for enterprise customers for large-scale, feature-rich centralized WLAN services."

Building Mission Critical WLANs

Virginia Hospital Center illustrates the information technology and business advantages gained by deploying Cisco's new 4400 Series WLAN controllers. With more than 3,500 users and plans to increase wireless network coverage, Virginia Hospital Center needed a scalable, dynamic and always-available wireless LAN solution.

"Having physicians who can move throughout the hospital and campus with real-time patient census and clinical information at their fingertips enables us to provide exceptional patient care," said Mark Rein, Director of Information Technology at Virginia Hospital Center. "Because of its high-density design, fault tolerance capabilities, and flexibility, the Cisco 4400 Series gave our hospital an easy to deploy solution, which freed up rack space, simplified management and allowed us to further automate our infrastructure without compromising features or performance."

In addition to providing a hotspot for visitors and patients within the hospital, Virginia Hospital Center uses their wireless network to improve the patient experience. Instead of having patients wait in a reception area to be admitted, the hospital admits patients directly to their rooms, along with a wireless cart, so that they can comfortably adjust to their new surroundings. This relieves patient stress and further maximizes the use of their wireless network.

Dynamic Solutions for Ever-Changing Networks

Cisco provides three series of enterprise controllers to address diverse enterprise WLAN requirements - the Cisco 2000 Series, 4100 Series and 4400 Series. These controllers provide the foundation for IT managers to easily scale and manage enterprise wireless networks.

Geared for the small-to-medium sized network environment, the Cisco 2000 Series supports up to six lightweight access points, making it a powerful tool in managing small stand-alone networks or island networks within a distributed enterprise.

The Cisco 4100 Series comes in three configurations, the 4112, 4124 and 4136, which supports a maximum of 12, 24 and 36 access points, respectively. To accommodate increasing data demands, all the 4100 Series come standard with a single Gigabit Ethernet uplink with a second hot stand-by link for high-speed LAN connectivity.

The Cisco 4400 Series is available in two models. The 4402 sports two Gigabit Ethernet ports and supports 12, 25 or 50 lightweight access points and the 4404, includes four Gigabit Ethernet ports and supports up to 100 access points. Designed for network growth and investment protection, these models include expansion slots that enable enterprises to add specialized features in the future, including VPN termination and other advanced security capabilities. Furthermore, the 4400 Series all support an optional redundant power supply to further ensure maximum availability.

All of the Cisco WLAN controllers come equipped with embedded software for adaptive, real-time RF management. Utilizing patent-pending Radio Resource Management (RRM) algorithms that detect and react in real time to changes in the air space, the controllers can intelligently adjust factors to create an optimal topology for wireless networking. In addition, all WLAN controllers can be deployed in an N+1 fashion to ensure system-level redundancy with minimal capital expenditures.

Cisco's centralized WLAN solution is managed using the Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS), the industry's premier platform for WLAN systems management. With WCS, enterprises have a complete platform for WLAN planning and design, mobility management, policy creation and enforcement, and high accuracy 802.11 device tracking. More information about Cisco's complete enterprise wireless solutions, including the Cisco 4400 Series Wireless LAN controller can be found at: www.cisco.com/go/securewireless