Foundry Networks will begin shipping its first wireless local area network (Lan) next month, which can be integrated with its existing products.

Although the networking supplier has a built up a good reputation among customers for its range of Ethernet networking products, this is its first move into the increasingly crowded wireless market.

The IronPoint wireless products support the current range of 802.11 frequencies on the market - a, b and g - and can be bought as a standalone product or as an integrated switch solution for larger installations.

The company claims that the products are more cost effective than others on the market and for existing customers the attraction is that IronPoint can be integrated with its existing switches, making management far easier.

Phil Kwarn, director of enterprise applications at Foundry, claimed that the supplier is deliberately late to the wireless space, allowing standards to evolve and giving it time to "sit back and design a solution that was best fit".

But in the past Foundry has shipped products before standards were finalised, most notably for 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Jon Collins, senior analyst at Quocirca, suggested that it is important for Foundry to have a wireless offering, and that many customers would rather stick with their wired networking supplier for ease of integration.

"Customers are looking for compatibility with existing equipment. So they'd be keen to work with their existing provider when they come to extending their wired network for wireless use," he said.

"For non-Foundry customers, wireless is a very crowded market. So it's a case of [asking] what is it adding that no one else is?"