Cisco Applications with a Deep Dive on the Mobile Communicator

Want more on 802.11n?
Check out our friend Chris Kozup's blog entries:The Power of 802.11n & Is 802.11n right for you?

Jimmy Ray shows us the Mobile Communicator

It is hard to get fired up about dial tone to me. I mean let's be serious here, dial tone is simply a 350Hz and 440Hz signal mixed together. But the study of the phone system is truly a walk down the history of interconnected systems. The thing I like and enjoy (sometimes) is actually breaking out of the mold of traditional telephony services and stepping into the power of data networking. Mobile Communicator is one of the devices that actually does this.

At first, I did not see the benefit of Mobile Communicator. Especailly on a smart phone. However, that faded very fast after I tested and really stressed out the device. The real power of truly "Mobile" communications is Presence. Folks just do not sit behind their desk any longer. The office is the World. Presence is an awesome extension to SIP that really gives us the meat and tators to a Unified Communications solution.

Mobile Communicator offers some predictable cool features like single number reach and unifed call logging. The coolest features that I found myself playing with the most were the integrated directory, which allows me to tie into the Corp LDAP Directory and click the contact and talk all day! This is radical because now I do not have to have more then one contact list to update. One master list for all devices, ah yes, the deep sigh of relief...


The other feature I like is the ability to disable a phone and erase if it is lost. This is very important because the more my phone REALLY becomes a Personal Data Assistant, the more valuable it is to black market information brokers. Consider how many laptops are ripped off just for the data. How much easier would a much smaller phone be? Like Robb always states; "It always comes back to security"

We also focused a little bit on 802.11n. I love wireless. Not as much as Popeye's Chicken but then what else compares to that? 11n (as it is refered to in cool circles...) is certainly one of the most controversial working groups that has been in the IEEE for a while. From the infighting between vendors and the CSIRO lawsuit, I always glad to see solid technology rising to the top like cream in a bucket.


The ulitmate dream of wireless is to chase wired clients right out of the building. Each standard gets closer and closer, but as you can see, IEEE standards do not happen overnight. Remember that in the IEEE standards are ratified by voting. I am sure each of you know how tough it is to get 5 poeple to agree on where to eat lunch, now imagine 500+ working engineers to agree on an invention... Nintendo has a similar quality control process where they believe it is better to be late to market with a quality product, then early to market with a crummy one.

When it comes to 802.11n, keep in mind the following things:
- 11n takes more juice to power it inline 18W verses 15W
- 40MHz vs 20MHz channels
- Much faster 100-300Meg!! Truthfully around 140Meg is about right
- Better distance approx 70m indoors and approx 250m outside
- Spatial coding techniques are used to achieve MIMO speeds

11n is really going to be a welcome addition to the wireless side of the house. I have been playing around with the 1250 AP and injector and I am VERY impressed at the performance of these units and the flexibility they offer.

Cisco Whitepaper on 802.11n

Jimmy Ray & Robb

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