Legra's Crypto Coming Out

[R. A. Hettinga]

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Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 18:55:15 -0500
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From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
Subject: Legra's Crypto Coming Out
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<http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=42917>

Unstrung - The world wide source for analysis of the global wireless economy

OCTOBER, 2003



 ?
Legra's Crypto Coming Out
11.03.03


Wireless LAN switch hopeful Legra Systems Inc. today announced that its
products are now generally available, and it also gave more clues about the
security aspects of its products.

The firm is claiming that its hardware is the only box to handle
cryptography at the switch-level with dedicated processors. "Our approach
is different from everyone else's," says Paul DeBeasi, VP of product
management and marketing. "We developed our own [cryptography] chip from
scratch."

DeBeasi says that Legra decided to take this approach because, with new
security implementations like WPA (WiFi Protected Access), "the
cryptography [performance] becomes the new bottleneck."

DeBeasi says that because of the additional silicon the Legra system can
support up to 60 802.11b (11 Mbit/s over 2.4 GHz) access points or 12 a or
g nodes (54 Mbit/s over 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz respectively) running at full
speed with cryptography on.

In the main, the details of Legra's product offering haven't changed since
the company first spoke to Unstrung back in April (see Legra: The Perfect
Prescription?). Like many other startups, the Burlington, Mass., firm is
taking a distributed approach to wireless LAN networking with a switch that
sits in the wiring closet or data center and can manage and secure Legra's
stripped-down access points (see Legra: The Perfect Prescription?).

Originally, Legra talked up the remote connection capabilities of its
switch, emphasizing the fact that its access points and switch didn't need
to be directly connected in order to communicate. But since April, rivals
Airespace Inc. and Aruba Wireless Networks have both added similar
capabilities to their offerings (seeAirespace Adds an Appliance and Aruba's
Mini-Switch).

- Dan Jones, Senior Editor, Unstrung

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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