Thanks to Torsten for this -- Red Herring notes today that Wi-Fi startup Xirrus has raised "an undisclosed amount of venture financing" from August Capital's David Marquardt, Steve Krausz of U.S. Venture Partners, and Bill Schroeder, former CEO of Diamond Multimedia Systems.

The fundraising is tied to an expansion of Xirrus' board to include Marquardt, Krausz and Schroeder. The Red Herring article quotes David Marquardt as saying his firm was "singularly impressed by Xirrus' innovation," which focuses on improving bandwidth, security, coverage and switching capabilities of Wi-Fi access points for businesses.

As the article notes, though, Xirrus faces serious competition from a number of other providers, including Cisco (which acquired Airespace last year) and aruba Networks, among many others.

An excellent Unstrung article goes into depth on the specific nature of that competition, looking at the strategic differences between deploying one 'God Box' for all wireless access in an office, or using multiple access points instead.