There may not be many differences in features and quality between WLAN equipment from Cisco and such equipment from other companies. Still, Cisco leads all other vendors comfortably, according to a recent study by Forrester Research. In a close examination of the top seven WLAN system vendors, Cisco was the clear victor, said Forrester's Ellen Daley. "Cisco is above everyone," she said. "They're the one to catch, but they're going to be hard to catch."

Forrester evaluated the leading WLAN vendors--Aruba Networks, Trapeze Networks, 3Com, Nortel Networks, Symbol Technologies, and Hewlett-Packard's ProCurve division--in three categories: strategy, current offerings and market presence. Those categories were then broken down into 44 sub-categories. Overall, Cisco ranked highest and was followed by Aruba, Trapeze and Nortel. "Cisco not only has the largest market presence--about 70 percent of all WLAN deployments use Cisco gear--but it also has the most complete vision of WLANs and their integration with wired networks," Daley wrote. "Aruba and Trapeze are fast followers in technology, but both have small market presence compared with Cisco."

For more on Forrester's report:
- see Andrew Hickey's searchnetworking article