Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) is no longer involved in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)'s efforts to draft a protocol that enables "lightweight" 802.11 access points to communicate with the new class of wireless LAN management switches that are emerging onto the market.

On the first draft of the IETF's lightweight access point protocol (LWAPP) memo, which came out in April, Cisco engineer Glenn Zorn (who we don't believe is related to downtown saxophonist and genre transgressive John Zorn) was named as one of the authors (see Access Point Tiff Simmers). However, on the newly released 01 version, only propellerheads from Airespace Inc. and NTT DoCoMo Labs are named.

When Unstrung spoke to Ron Seide, product line manager for wireless LANs at Cisco recently, he said it was a matter of "intellectual freedom" that Zorn be involved in the IETF work (see Cisco's Speculative Spec ). By press time, Cisco hadn't returned calls to explain why Zorn is no longer free.

A gag order? Surely shome mishtake.

— Dan Jones, Senior Editor, Unstrung