Most vendors are able to pr ovide general guidance at no charge or more advanced technical services for a fee. Today's products have improved significantly with respect to ease of configuration and management. Look for a product that provides flexible configuration capabilities. I and MIB II, but enterprise extensions are needed to let you monitor parameters such as signal strength and packet loss on the wireless connection. You also should investigate software updates.
Some systems load their software from a floppy disk, while others use firmware.
The latter is generally preferred as more reliable, if updating is easy. One final bit of advice is a holdover from the days when prestand ard 10BASE-T Ethernet products were offered. Organizations contemplating the acquisition of products compliant with 802.11 draft standards should look for the same kind of protection from their vendors. Dave Molta is director of network and system services at Syracuse University. Members include Aironet, AMD, Digital Equipment Corp., Harris Semiconductor, IBM Corp., Intermec, Lucent Technologies, Norand Corp., Proxim, Raytheon Co., Symbol Technologies, 3Com Corp. and Windata.