TMCnews Featured Article

(Editor's Note: This article refers to a video interview shot at Interop (News - Alert) 2010. To view TMCnet's entire library of videos from Interop and other industry shows, demonstrations and interviews in our in-house studio, visit our Video News home page.)

At Interop 2010 in Las Vegas recently, TMC's (News - Alert) Erik Linask sat down and talkedwith Cisco's Chris Kozup, senior manager mobility solutions, about some of the things going on in wireless technology, specifically interference.

Kozup said Cisco (News - Alert) has just announced a product called Cisco Clean Air, explaining that "much like the name suggests, the focus of this technology is to actually improve the performance of the wireless network," by cleaning the air of interference.

Listing the most common causes of interference, Kozup mentioned the standard culprits - "cordless phones, Bluetooth, little spy cameras, microwave ovens, baby monitors, the list goes on and on."

It's actually part of a trend, Kozup said. The the number of consumer electronic devices using the spectrum are causing more interference.

Historically it was more difficult to overcome the challenges, Kozup noted, adding that with the Clean Air product, Cisco has embedded into the access points their new Application-Specific Integrated Circuit which "actually has the spectrum intelligence integrated directly into the ASIC." This, he explained, is basically a way of embedding that intelligence directly into the network itself.

So Clean Air lets an administrator go out and understand exactly where the interference is coming from in that environment and take care of the problem, Kozup said.

And not only is there reporting - of course there's that - but, as Kozup said, the product can also go back and take historical looks over the past month, so any interference could be traced out over the past 30 days.