Oliver Thylmann: In your recently announced A036 Wireless LAN Access Point you added the option to upgrade the firmware wirelessly along with support for Extensible Authentication Protocols (EAP). Can you elaborate a bit on the different protocols in question?

Paavo Aro: Local Area Networks are often deployed in places where unauthorized devices may try to attach to the LAN infrastructure. This comes of course even more true when terminal device has the capability to use wireless connection to the LAN. IEEE 802.1x (EAP) protocol provides a mechanism on logical link layer to authenticate and authorize a desired user, meanwhile it denies access to LAN port if authentication fails. A port in this context is a single attachment point to the LAN infrastructure.

Nokia A036 Wireless LAN Access Point S/W release 1.1 includes support for EAP protocol, which makes it compatible with terminals that uses EAP as authentication framework. Nokia Authentication Server rel 3.0 supports EAP/SIM authentication type. By complementing the Nokia Operator Wireless LAN system with other RADIUS servers, also additional EAP types (like EAP/MD5, EAP/MS-CHAP, EAP/TLS, or EAP/TTLS) can be supported.

Nokia A036 Wireless LAN Access Point S/W rel 1.1 enables shared usage of access zone where several PWLAN operators that use EAP/RADIUS can authenticate their customers. The new rel 1.1 is functionally backwards compatible with current Nokia Operator Wireless LAN system release 1.0 authentication types, i.e Nokia's proprietary "NAAP" for SIM based authentication and the standard HTTP username-password.

Nokia A036 Wireless LAN Access Point rel 1.1, Nokia Authentication Server rel 3.0, and Nokia P022 Access Controller rel 2.3 will be available in Q3/2003 as Nokia Operator Wireless LAN system release 2.0.

Oliver Thylmann: As a final question, preferably in a short and feisty manner, what would you like to tell all the people who say that 3G is doomed because of WLAN?

Paavo Aro: Business wise Nokia positions public WLAN complementary to all G's (2G, 2.5G, and 3G) both for operators and vendors alike - and most importantly for end-users as well. Nokia's Data to Go solution is geared to make a good start on this. Technologies themselves have vast inbuilt differences which gives them distinct complementary roles in the overall network architecture. Both 3G and (P)WLAN will be there for us to enjoy in years to come.