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Cisco Systems Inc. is now looking at the prospects of several of its networking divisions introducing WiMax products, according to industry sources, reversing a sometimes combative stance on the emerging wireless technology from the company.

“The wireless, cable, and Linksys groups are all looking at WiMax,” a source tells Unstrung. “These have different motivations and different products.”

Cisco will face the eternal conundrum that it always faces when entering a new wireless market, the source adds: “The question will be, do these internal groups do the work… or who will they buy?”

Another source, however, says at least some of the development is internal and the company is already working on WiMax. This could result in additional WiMax capabilities for its municipal networking offerings.

In the past, WiMAX Forum member Cisco has pooh-poohed the technology’s chances of success as a wide-area wireless access technology. Most notably, when CTO Charlie Giancarlo said the business case for WiMax was “not compelling” in November 2004. The firm has softened its stance a little since then but still has a white paper on its site explaining why it won’t build WiMax base stations.

The company’s official stance on WiMax is still fairly muted. “Cisco always looks at different wireless technologies,” allows Ben Gibson, director of mobility solutions marketing at the firm, but he adds: “WiMax is certainly not nearly as far along in the market as wireless LAN.”

Cisco, however, would by no means be the only major networking company to change its position on WiMax as the market evolves. Just recently, Qualcomm Inc. bought into mobile WiMax, while Ericsson AB decided to get out of the market and concentrate on cellular 4G updates.

Certainly there is more support for WiMax from mobile operators and other service providers now than there was in 2004 or 2005 — when Cisco first got sniffy on WiMax. In the U.S. alone, Clearwire LLC and Sprint Nextel Corp. are working on multi-billion dollar WiMax rollouts through 2008 and beyond.

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung

Sprint wants to shrink WiMax base stations even further so that they can be used to enhance data transfer speed and capacity in the home.

Sprint has already revealed some of its plans to ensure decent WiMax coverage inside larger buildings with picocell WiMax radios for campuses, offices, shopping malls, and conference centers with picocells. The Reston, Va., operator also has an RFP out for what it calls “Low Cost Internet Base Stations” but most others in the industry call home base stations or “femtocells.” (

A home base station, or femtocell, is a low-cost, low-power 3G cellular radio system that users can put in their dwellings to boost bandwidth and coverage and enable new applications such as fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) in the home. Such mini-base stations have become more interesting to vendors as operators have started to take the devices more seriously, both as an alternative to WiFi hotspots or as a complementary technology.

Sprint has already made it clear that it anticipates that in-building coverage will be an important aspect of its WiMax rollout. “Femtocells are on our radar,” says a spokesman for the operator.

The spokesperson, however, wouldn’t be drawn on any specifics about particular RFPs. “As a matter of policy we don’t comment on RFPs,” he says.

Sprint is said to be looking for several hundred thousand of these mini-base stations along with smaller — but still significant — numbers of picocell-scale equipment for its WiMax deployment, which is at a testing phase right now and due to go live in many major cities in the U.S. in 2008. CDMA and EV-DO support could also be part of the specifications for these appliances.

The problem for vendors wishing to compete will be pulling together these disparate networking technologies. Indoor wireless specialist RadioFrame Networks Inc. has been upfront in its plans to bring a WiMax home base station to market. The company has already worked with Nextel on indoor systems and must be considered a strong contender for any new contracts.

AirWalk Communications Inc. , Airvana Inc. , and Samsung Corp. are all in the running since the three vendors are established in the CDMA business. Samsung also has the WiMax chops and experience, especially now that it has been involved in early deployments in South Korea.

Silicon could be key in enabling a multi-radio mini-base station. Qualcomm Inc. has already started to express an interest in developing chips for this type of application. Major players such as Texas Instruments Inc., as well as smaller companies like PicoChip Designs Ltd. , are already working on dedicated femtocell chipsets. Meanwhile, RadioFrame is extending its own OmniFrame silicon to support WiMax.

Insider analyst Brown, author of the recent “3G Home Base Stations: Femto Cells & FMC for the Masses” report, says that no matter what happens with Sprint’s WiMax-related work, femtocells are one of the new hot technologies in the world of wireless.

“A major operator will roll out a femtocell deployment this year,” says Brown. He predicts that either a CDMA operator in the U.S. or a European operator that has a serious GSM footprint but few 3G networks will be first.

Nokia expects to start selling mobile devices using WiMAX Internet technology in early 2008 WiMAX allows very high-speed Internet access from laptops, phones or other mobile devices over greater distances than previous technologies. Nokia’s closest rival in the handset market, U.S. based Motorola, also plans to bring its first WiMAX enabled mobile phone to the market in 2008.

Intel, Nokia, Samsung and Motorola all support the open-standard WiMAX as an alternative wireless broadband Internet connection alongside third generation mobile telephony networks, on which Internet access can be slowed if networks fill up with voice callers.

“Nokia is dedicating significant research, development and intellectual property to WiMAX and supports efforts in making it a global broadband standard. The combination of WiMAX broadband technology and Web 2.0 services offers people an enriched high-speed Internet experience free from the desktop PC. Nokia plans to bring its first WiMAX enabled mobile device to market in early 2008.” Nokia said in a statement.

WiMAX will make wireless broadband much cheaper to deliver—up to 10 times cheaper than current third-generation cellular telephony networks.

The radio spectrum for WiMAX networks is rented out by regulators at more affordable prices than for 3G mobile phone spectrum, and WiMAX equipment vendors claim the infrastructure and handheld devices will be cheaper than 3G systems.

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The use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in Type I Cryptographic equipment has historically been limited. While FPGA use is allowed, restrictions on how they are used can result in inefficient processing and an increase in system size, weight and power. For example, redundancy and isolation of functionality is required through physically separate devices. This paper introduces new technology that will provide the industry with an FPGA-based single chip cryptographic solution.

NSA DISCLOSES FPGA-BASED SINGLE CHIP CRYPTOGRAPHIC SOLUTION