Colubris Launches MultiService WLAN Controllers

By Tara Seals

Colubris Networks Inc. attacked the wireless/wireline integration market and publicly announced the InMotion MultiService Controller (MSC) 5000 series family today at Wi-Fi/VoWi-Fi Planet in Baltimore. The InMotion MSC 5500 is engineered for large campus and enterprise deployments and scales to 200 wireless access points serving thousands of users. The InMotion MSC 5200 was developed for small offices and remote locations with the ability to support up to 25 wireless access points and hundreds of users.

Enterprises and service providers can centrally manage and control multiservice networks with the controllers, eliminating the high costs and technical complexity associated with building and maintaining a separate wireless switch overlay network. Part of Colubris Unified Services Network vision, the InMotion MSC family unifies the wireless and wired networks into a single network from a management perspective.

Colubris InMotion MSCs work with existing local area network switches enabling the delivery of multiple services voice, data and video over a single wireless infrastructure with distributed intelligence wireless network. The InMotion MSC Family is part of the Colubris Intelligent MultiService System (CIMS), a comprehensive open networking solution for deploying wireless network access services based on 802.11 standards. The system also includes the InReach MultiService Access Points (MAP) and the InCharge Centralized Network Management System (NMS).

Colubris architecture provides distributed switching with centralized management and control for industry-leading network scale. These capabilities include centralization of quality of service (QoS) for business-critical applications, security, Layer 2 and 3 roaming, auto-discovery and auto-configuration.

The InMotion MSC Family includes support for a suite of services, including voice over WLAN, fast roaming, guest/public access and plug-and-play services. More services are scheduled for release in 2005-6.

The InMotion MSC-5200 is a 1U rack-mount system with 10/100 Ethernet ports and integrates into an existing Ethernet backbone infrastructure. It supports a network of 25 InReach MAPs.

The InMotion MSC-5500 is a 1U rack-mount system with gigabit Ethernet ports and supports a network of 200 InReach MAPs.