XJack Technology Cuts Battery Drain

3Coms 11M-bps WI-FI PC Card with XJack antenna, the latest addition to the companys wireless access card line, offers power and security enhancements.

The XJack antenna included with the $119 Wi-Fi PC Card, which is available now, can save time and power. Instead of sticking awkwardly out of my laptop, the antenna retracted into the PCMCIA slot to allow safe traveling. The card powers off when the antenna is pushed in, conserving battery life.

The card supports major standards for interoperability with multivendor access points and WLAN infrastructures. It provides additional security when used with 3Com access points; I installed it in a laptop running Windows 2000 and tested it using a 3Com Access Point 8000. I set up a secured WLAN using 3Coms Dynamic Security Link to provide user password authentication with user-specific 128-bit encryption keys that dynamically changed during each networking session.

I found the Dynamic Security Link easy to set up, but IT managers will have to use other security methods for heterogeneous WLANs.

I tested the card with 3Coms Access Point 8000 and could configure serial authentication techniques to provide upper-layer EAP-TLS and EAP-MD5 authentication using certificates for enterprise-level security.

Go to www.3com.com for more information.