Just to add another on the downside- new Licensing costs. Can be a bit maddening, depending on which solution gets purchased.
Lee -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:wireless-...@listserv.educause.edu] On Behalf Of Voll, Toivo Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 2:38 PM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] WLAN Deployment-High number of users LWAPP does bring significant benefits. Whether they're worth the cost is another matter. 1) Radio Resource Management. The system will figure out how to properly interleave channels and set power levels for minimum interference. It's not 100% perfect, but I wager it's better than almost any human can do and can respond to changing conditions. 2) No more manual firmware updates, configuration back-ups etc. All the AP management is centralized; if one goes down or catches the flu it's all on a central console. 3) Roaming. You can have multiple subnets, one SSID, and when users move from an AP in one subnet to the other, the controller(s) handle the roaming transparently to the user. With autonomous APs the client loses connectivity, has to re-dhcp and all that. Depending on your physical environment this can be a big one. 4) Security, authentication etc. stuff. Downside: unless you can get two controllers, you have a single point of failure: controller goes, and you no longer have a wireless network anywhere. You have two subnet/vlan sizing issues; the subnet presented to the wireless users and the network on which the management interface on the APs sits. Neither should be too big; you want to keep broadcast traffic low on the radio side so that broadcasts don't end up eating up all your air time; you want to keep broadcast traffic low on the wired side because the APs (especially old ones) have some issues with broadcast loads. Because all user traffic is tunneled to the controller, it really doesn't matter what network an AP is on, though, from the wired side as long as it can talk to the controller. Unless you have outdoor coverage from light poles and such or a campus with no wired backbone, I don't see much use for mesh. I'd stay away from multiplying SSIDs. We're using a single SSID university-wide to lessen customer confusion and reduce help desk load. Other factors: 1200-series and 1100-series APs can all be converted from autonomous to LWAPP -> investment protection. Past that, if you're looking at having to fork-lift hardware (old vxWorks APs) Aruba is a pretty solid option too at very similar price. -- Toivo Voll Network Administrator Information Technology Communications University of South Florida -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:wireless-...@listserv.educause.edu] On Behalf Of reflect ocean Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 1:52 PM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] WLAN Deployment-High number of users Hi I run a medium-sized wifi network.We are cisco shop (autonommous access points).Recently wifi users number have reached limits we didn't expect.Because of that,we had to adjust our subnet network in order to support more users associated to the only SSID our wireless network use. I've been looking for alternative to create another ssid and associate it to another different subnet but I can't find any related to. Our wireless lan is currently reaching 1000 users or so.I'm not very confortable with the idea of having such number of users in wireless subnet. We have deployed around 60 cisco autonomous acess points throughout the campus and this subnet is firewalled and routed in our core switch which is a hope away to accessing Internet.It's very simple design. What would be a recommended deployment in this case with a growing number of users? Would deploying lwap bring any advantage to this design? We want to keep a single ssid and mobility for wireless users. Would mesh network bring any benefit? Thank you ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
