Good to see a partnership between the old and the new, or the big and the small: WLAN switch start-up Aruba Networks has entered into a partnership deal with networking big hitter Juniper Networks to sell WiFi security equipment to customers in the enterprise. Aruba's marketing VP, Keerti Melkote, told Unstrung that that the deal builds on Aruba's long association with security software provider Funk (Juniper acquired Funk last November for $122 million)

The agreement calls for Aruba to supply its WLAN controller and APs, and for Juniper to bring Funk client and server security software for both wired and wireless networks. The partnership will help both companies better compete with Cisco, the 800-pound gorilla in this game.

Juniper has been on deal-signing spree of late. It has a deal with Meru for VoWLAN technology, and a public access hot spot deal with Colubris.

For on the Aruba-Juniper deal
-see Dan Jones's Unstrung report

MORE: Aruba has just released an enhancements to its enterprise WLAN system. The company says that new enhancements, available this month in a new version of its ArubaOS Mobility Software, make Aruba's mobility controller the most scalable enterprise wireless system on the market: A single Aruba WLAN system is now capable of supporting up to 1000 simultaneous 802.1X authentication transactions per second. Press release.