Cisco Systems Inc. has announced a new network hardware device called CTE 1400, which will transform Web-based information normally accessed through a browser into data that can be displayed on a wide variety of wireless devices, according to the company.
Those devices include personal digital assistants (PDA) based on the Palm OS and ones that use Microsoft Corp.’s Windows CE, Cisco officials said.
One user who has been testing the CTE 1400, Mitch Davis, CIO at Stanford University Law School in Stanford, Calif., said his institution has used it to convert information, such as that from Stanford Law databases and legal case studies, into formats for display on Palm VII PDAs from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Palm Inc.
“We also have projects to convert information for access by WAP [wireless application protocol] phones,” Davis said.
Seth Redmore, product marketing manager at Cisco, said the new unit uses content identification capabilities now available in Cisco’s Catalyst 6000 series of network switches. The switches can determine if a request for information is coming from a standard computer Web browser, PDA or WAP-enabled phone, Redmore said.
When packet headers indicate that the request is from a wireless device, that request is routed by network switch to the CTE 1400. The CTE then works as a reverse proxy server, he said. It pulls the content desired by the user from the appropriate network server and automatically customizes it for the application and device requesting it.
Davis said he likes the built-in design function of the CTE.
It’s accessible through a browser, and IT personnel can configure page styles from Web-based applications for use on a wide variety of devices, from mobile phones to PDAs, without any knowledge of XML or HTML, he said.
But Scott Ellison, director of mobile and wireless communications at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass., said that although the capability of converting information to screen formats that are appropriate for wireless devices will become increasingly important, some types of content are simply not useful on small screens, citing spreadsheets as an example. “The delimiters for wireless devices are screen size and keyboard functionality,” Ellison added.
Redmore said the CTE 1400 will ship for US$69,995.
