A variety of useful information for enhanced RF capacity management can be generated. This information can be based on location trends, including:
• Client tag distribution across a floor: where people have been and when

• Statistical location information: where people have been and associated traffic analysis

• Coverage areas: where hotspots are based on volume of people and traffic to determine how concentrated RF resources are and how WLAN is handling the number of clients

Integration with Location-Based Applications

To facilitate the deployment of location-based applications in the enterprise, the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance is equipped with a rich and open SOAP/XML-based API. Applications can rapidly make use of location information by importing components that impact the RF environment, such as entire network maps that include buildings, floors, access points, coverage areas, and device lists from the location appliance. Rich and actionable data can also be imported, such as recent and historical location and statistical device information. Location-based alarms and notifications can be triggered in applications through area boundary definitions, allowed areas, and distances.
Benefits

The Cisco Wireless Location Appliance delivers a host of tangible benefits to enterprises running business-critical wireless LANs, including:
• Increased location accuracy: The Cisco Wireless Location Appliance uses the Cisco patent-pending RF fingerprinting technology to determine the location of wireless devices. Cisco has the only WLAN infrastructure that correlates known RF characteristics of a building with user information to track mobile devices to within a few meters.

• Location-based alerts: This feature provides the ability to proactively send location notifications based on device movement, device absence, zone entry and exit of tracked devices, Wi-Fi tag battery level, Wi-Fi device position change, emergency groups, and chokepoint information.

• Scalability: With the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance, 2500 devices including wireless clients or Wi-Fi tags can be tracked simultaneously, helping ensure that location services can be applied to an entire enterprise environment.

• Lowered total cost of ownership: The Cisco solution reduces operating expenses by using the existing Cisco WLAN network infrastructure in conjunction with the location appliance. This approach is more cost-effective than proprietary or single-purpose location tracking solutions because it uses standard 802.11 components and does not require dedicated access points for location tracking.

• Transparent integration: Cisco is the only vendor to integrate location tracking directly into the existing WLAN infrastructure. The same Cisco access points that deliver data traffic are also used to locate wireless devices. This minimizes capital expenditures and helps enable the WLAN to act upon location information for better security and capacity management.

• Flexibility: Cisco offers the only WLAN system that can track 802.11 clients, such as a laptop or PDA, and other, Wi-Fi mobile devices equipped with active radio frequency identification (RFID) tags (tags supplied by Cisco partners).

• Easy deployment of business applications: Asset tracking, inventory management, location-based security, automated workflow management, and other new business applications can be easily deployed with the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance.

• Innovation and Investment Protection: The Cisco Compatible Extensions program for Wi-Fi tags allows customers with a Cisco Unified Wireless Network and a Cisco Location Solution to benefit from the latest innovations offered by Cisco's technology partners. Customers can choose Wi-Fi tags from multiple vendors as well as implement mixed-vendor applications that integrate with the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance API.

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