5/9/2005 -- Among the raft of new product announcements Cisco Systems made at last week’s Interop trade show, the company also unveiled an appliance for tracking wireless devices within an organization’s local area network.

The Cisco 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliance can be used for a variety of purposes, such as tracking unauthorized wireless network access points, asset tracking, inventory management and workflow automation, the company said. The product can also track IEEE 802.11 radio frequency identification (RFID)-tagged devices, based on the capabilities of Cisco’s Wireless Control System (WCS).

The location of every networked device is graphically displayed on floor plans in the WCS, giving network administrators a better idea of each device’s physical location.

To accommodate diverse enterprise environments, the wireless tracking appliance has an open Application Programming Interface (API) that can be integrated with third-party software applications.

The Cisco Wireless Location Appliance lists for $14,995 (U.S.) and is scheduled to ship in June. -Dan Hong