To date, most organizations are having mixed results with their wireless local area network (WLAN) implementations. Although they enjoy the flexibility and increased productivity that WLANs provide, many businesses still have several concerns when it comes to WLAN infrastructure. Some concerns include the cost and complexity of deployment and ongoing management, performance constraints, and the ability to support bandwidth-hungry, latency-sensitive applications. However, concerns about security in particular are why some organizations have yet to invest in WLAN technology at all.

This paper examines the characteristics of a next-generation solution that helps alleviate the prevailing issues and challenges associated with today's WLAN implementations. The emergence of products that conform to related criteria holds the key to enabling enterprises to utilize WLANs more widely and to having them more fully realize the important benefits that wireless technology has to offer.