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Atheros Announces New
Advanced Wireless LAN Products and
Future Direction; Immediate Availability of Combo 802.11a/g/b,
2nd-Generation 802.11a, and Integrated Access Point Solutions
SUNNYVALE,
Calif., March 11, 2002 - Atheros Communications today introduced a family of
chipsets that positions the company as the leading vendor for secure and
easy-to-use high-performance wireless networking. The three new all-CMOS
chipsets include the industry's first combo 802.11a/g/b solution for dual-band
wireless LAN support, a second-generation IEEE 802.11a solution with enhanced
security and international capabilities, and a highly integrated solution for
low-cost, enterprise-class 802.11a access points. All chipsets are sampling now.
Atheros also
announced two new strategic directions, which include support for orthogonal
frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) as the preferred modulation for wireless
LANs at all frequencies, and a comprehensive security strategy centered on the
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).
OFDM
Everywhere(TM): The Future of Wireless LANs
Atheros believes strongly in the superiority of OFDM and
therefore has made it the basis of its product-development strategy --
"OFDM Everywhere." The IEEE has endorsed the broad adoption of OFDM
for wireless LANs because of the higher speeds that result from its efficient
use of spectrum and because of its resistance to multipath and other types of
interference. OFDM has become the technology of choice in many communications
markets including digital cable, DSL, digital TV, power-line networking, and
wireless LANs.
"Today's announcements demonstrate our strategic
commitment to extend the benefits of OFDM to all available unlicensed
spectrums," said Rich Redelfs, president and chief executive officer of
Atheros. "Only OFDM has the effect of maximizing overall system capacity,
thus allowing for the future growth of network traffic."
More
Channels and Higher Systems Capacity
The combination of OFDM performance and broad spectrum
support improves network scalability, which is crucial in enterprise or
university campuses, large public "hot-spots," multi-tenant offices,
and apartments. A broad spectrum increases the number of available channels,
thereby reducing or eliminating co-channel interference caused by the reuse of
channels. In large wireless LAN deployments, when channels are reused in close
proximity, co-channel interference results in immediate performance degradation.
The new Atheros
chipsets support up to 16 separate channels of 54 Mbps connectivity in the
2.4-GHz and 5-GHz unlicensed frequencies available in North America and Asia. Up
to 22 separate channels are supported in the European countries where additional
spectrum is available.
By way of
contrast, networks operating only on the 802.11b standard are limited to three
separate channels of 11 Mbps, or a total of 33 Mbps, before incurring
dramatically reduced performance as a result of co-channel interference. The new
Atheros offerings support up to 864 Mbps of network system capacity in the U.S.
before reusing a channel, or more than 1 Gbps of wireless connectivity in parts
of Europe.
Enterprise-Class
Security
Atheros also announced its strategy to deliver the
industry's most secure and high performance wireless LAN solutions. The new
Atheros chipsets feature a comprehensive security solution covering four key
areas -- AES encryption, 802.1x authentication, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs),
and Virtual LANs (VLANs).
The company is
the first to support AES, the state-of-the-art encryption technology selected by
the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology to replace 3DES (Triple
Data Encryption Standard), the technology currently used for banking and other
high security applications. AES is universally considered the best commercially
available encryption and integrity-checking technology, and is part of the
developing 802.11i specification.
Most current
security implementations run their encryption in firmware, thereby dramatically
slowing the performance and throughput of the system. All new Atheros chipsets
include the hardware acceleration necessary to execute AES at up to 108 Mbps
without performance degradation. The new Atheros offerings also support Temporal
Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) and Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) for legacy
systems that do not support AES.
For
authentication, Atheros uses 802.1x to verify that clients have the credentials
to be on the network. 802.1x centralizes network authorization, dynamic key
management, and user administration to enhance the security and interoperability
of wireless LANs.
VPN and VLAN
features enable end-to-end security through the use of tunneling protocols and
certificate authorities while separating different classes of traffic over the
same physical wireless network. In a large enterprise, for example, a single
wireless network would be able to have one virtual network for employees and
another virtual network for visitors. An airport might use this feature to have
a secure virtual network for employees managing flight operations and a separate
open network for travelers wishing to connect to the Internet.
A New
Family of Unprecedented WLAN Solutions
Atheros has introduced three new chipsets, with
associated reference designs and software. These unprecedented solutions extend
the company's leadership in CMOS radio integration, and clearly establish
Atheros as the leading provider of the industry's most flexible and
high-performing WLAN solutions over the broadest range of the unlicensed
spectrum. Each chipset supports the developing extensions to the IEEE 802.11
standard, including 802.11i Enhanced Security, 802.11e Quality of Service (QoS),
and 802.11h Spectrum Management for European regulatory requirements. The new
chipsets are:
| -- |
Combo 802.11a/g/b Wireless LAN
Chipset (AR5001X) -- The three-chip CMOS solution is the first to
support all of the IEEE 802.11 family of standards: the 5-GHz 802.11a
standard, the legacy 2.4-GHz 802.11b standard, and the OFDM enhancement
for 2.4 GHz in the draft 802.11g standard. |
| -- |
Second-Generation 802.11a
Chipset (AR5001A) -- A two-chip solution that continues the heritage of
Atheros' original award-winning AR5000 chipset but is enhanced to
include support for advanced security, international features, increased
network system capacity, higher integration to reduce costs, and even
better performance than before. |
| -- |
Integrated Enterprise-Quality
Access Point Chipset (AR5001AP) |
| -- |
A two-chip 802.11a access point
solution that is the most highly integrated solution ever offered for
WLAN access points at any frequency. Features include a high-performance
MIPS processor, complete 802.11a solution, multiple 10/100 Ethernet MACs,
and multiple UARTs to simplify Bluetooth or other integration. |
Product Availability
All of the new chipsets are sampling now with volume
production in the second quarter of this year. End user products will be
launched by a variety of computing and consumer electronics manufacturers in the
second half of the year. For details on the chipsets and their
implementations, please see the three associated news releases on the
802.11a/g/b combo solution, the second-generation 802.11a solution, and the
integrated access point solution.
About Atheros Communications, Inc.
Atheros Communications is the leading developer of
networking technologies for secure, high-performance wireless local area
networks. As the industry innovator and market-share leader in wireless OFDM
technology compliant with the IEEE 802.11 specifications, Atheros is driving
transparent connections among electronic devices in the office, home and on the
road. Atheros technology is being used by many of the world's leading wireless
equipment manufacturers including Accton, Actiontec, ALPS Electric, D-Link,
Intel, Intermec, Netgear, Proxim, SMC Networks, Sony, TDK, UltraDevices and
others. For more information, visit www.atheros.com
or send email to info@atheros.com.
# # #
CONTACT:
Atheros
Communications
Cheryl
Patstone, 408/773-5344
cheryl@atheros.com
or
A&R
Partners for Atheros
Greg
Wood, 650/762-2838
gwood@arpartners.com
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