March 08, 2005 08:00 ET

Roving Planet Launches Enhanced Security and Performance Focused Wireless LAN Management Platform

Central Site Director 2.9 Combines Group-Based Policies With Dashboard Technology for Improved Real-Time Management

WESTMINSTER, CO -- (MARKET WIRE) -- March 8, 2005 -- Roving Planet, a leading provider of integrated wireless LAN security and management solutions, today announced the immediate availability of its Central Site Director (CSD) Release 2.9. CSD 2.9 seamlessly interoperates with the industry's broadest set of legacy and switched wireless LANs to provide deep visibility and full management control. With the delivery of CSD 2.9 Roving Planet has clearly positioned itself as offering the most feature-rich and comprehensive wireless network management platform in the industry.

CSD 2.9 introduces new group-based security policies, including restricting specific group rights with a customized portal, redirecting groups to a specific URL after authentication, and setting a session-timeout by group to control time spent on the network. CSD 2.9 also enhances the look, feel, and flow of the web interface to permit easier and more intuitive navigation, along with more actionable WLAN information and reporting filters. The Roving Planet CSD Platform is the only WLAN management solution that provides a true open architecture via XML-based APIs and a clearly defined Web services framework, which facilitates simplified custom integrations with existing network and management systems.

"We listened to our customers and as a result, we have dramatically raised the bar for wireless LAN security and management products," stated Greg Mesch, President and CEO of Roving Planet. "Roving Planet is a best-in-breed solution for securing and managing wireless networks, monitoring network activity, delivering audit trails, and generating metrics and executive information system reports. No other vendor offers all of these capabilities as a unified solution."

Key feature enhancements of CSD 2.9 include:

Restricted Groups -- The Restricted Groups feature gives the user only the rights of the restricted group, regardless of any other groups the user has membership in, via a customizable web portal. This is an ideal feature when it's necessary to temporarily change the rights of a user.

URL Redirect -- It is often appropriate to send certain groups to a specific website rather than their original request. For example, after a guest authenticates, the guest is sent to an informational webpage about the site while an employee is redirected to the company intranet.

User Interface Enhancements -- IT managers now have extensive information available for both real-time events and historic audit trails. Roving Planet's new Information Center includes the following:

--  Info Center: The Info Center allows administrators to quickly see a
    metric of network performance. By displaying an "At-a-Glance" view of the
    current system status, administrators can learn daily usage patterns and
    detect abnormalities. The page is automatically updated and refreshed, and
    displays the date and time of the last update.
    
--  Detailed Connection Information: With this feature, an administrator
    can instantly discover where users are on the network, how long the device
    has been active on the network, how much bandwidth the device is consuming,
    and what applications the device has accessed.
    
    
--  Web Usage Charts: The Web Usage Charts feature provides the ability to
    monitor CPU, Traffic, Memory and Connections usage for components.
    
--  Hardware Health Monitor: This feature provides internal system
    monitoring through SNMP.
    

Session Timeout -- A session timeout prevents a user from remaining authenticated for a prolonged period of time. Session timeouts can be set on a group basis.

Simple SignOn™ -- The Simple SignOn feature simplifies the user authentication process for end-users. Simple SignOn utilizes the Roving Planet web-portal to authenticate the user's login name and password against a centralized LDAP, Active Directory or RADIUS authentication server. Subsequent network access does not require any user-interaction until the expiration date that is configured by the administrator.

About Roving Planet

Roving Planet (www.rovingplanet.com) solves the challenges of wireless LAN security and management with an approach that goes beyond merely managing wireless infrastructure configuration. Products from Roving Planet manage and secure distributed Wi-Fi networks, simplify authentication and access control, and provide correlated wireless LAN intelligence and executive reports, all from a single user console.