Airespace Wireless Enterprise Platform review

The ACS software brings into play some interesting management features and our favourite is the mapping capability. Load a BMP, GIF or JPEG drawing of your building into the Airespace Floor Plan Editor, add walls, doors and windows and then import it into ACS. Next you position the identified APs within the structure and sit back and view the heat-signature-style mapping that shows the coverage and signal strength of each unit.

Providing you specified the correct thickness before importing the drawing, it will show how walls affect wireless coverage and even signal leakage through windows. If you add the optional Location Tracking module, you can track wireless clients and build up a map showing their position in the building and roaming activity. Airespace uses RF fingerprinting and a proprietary prediction tool and can highlight the physical location of rogue access points and ad-hoc networks the moment they come online.

There's much more to ACS as it provides a complete overview of your wireless network, identified rogues, areas of poor coverage and the chattiest APs, plus it includes wireless intrusion detection and prevention using a regularly updated attack database. Reporting facilities are also good, although these are limited to displaying results only in graphical format.

There's no denying Airespace is offering smaller businesses a slick wireless security product. But although the switch and APs are priced competitively, the ACS and Location Tracking modules do add substantially to the asking price. Nevertheless, if network security is paramount then Airespace will be a sophisticated platform that could easily make drive-by hacking and war-chalking things of the past.