Enterprises also need to have the concept of development when purchasing wireless switches.

When purchasing wireless devices for enterprises, you must also have a developmental perspective, not only considering its performance, price, but also its use time and expansion. Then, we will analyze the issues we need to consider when purchasing a wireless switch.

We know that the cycle of a network is about five years, and five years can allow an enterprise to form a certain scale. When such an enterprise chooses a wireless switch, the scalability of Wireless AP management should be taken into account. As Chinese enterprises enter the Internet era, WLAN networks have become a hot spot in Enterprise Network Construction because of their outstanding role in improving enterprise efficiency, reducing enterprise costs, and improving employee satisfaction. How to easily build and deploy a WLAN network becomes a problem for enterprise managers.

Because the independent deployment of fat ap is not suitable for enterprise networking due to management and business support restrictions, it is more suitable for home applications. For enterprise WLAN deployment, the consensus in the industry is that the fit ap deployment mode with centralized control and management is used to build an enterprise WLAN Network. That is to say, the switch with a wireless controller and the Wireless AP can jointly meet enterprises' wireless coverage requirements, IT effectively solves the concerns of enterprise IT personnel on AP management and meets enterprises' needs for wireless voice, video, and other value-added services. After the WLAN deployment mode is solved, enterprise network construction managers should consider the following issues when selecting a wireless switch.

Factors to consider when purchasing a wireless switch: sufficient AP management capacity

To deploy WLAN, enterprises must first consider how to plan the network, how many aps to deploy, and what types of wireless switches are required to ensure coverage without wasting investment. It not only ensures existing applications, but also balances future development. The number of AP-managed wireless switches can be configured in two ways.

First, determine the number of APS Based on the space size. The number of wireless APS is closely related to the physical pattern of the places covered. The principle of Wireless AP coverage is to first ensure the coverage area, the effective interaction between the AP and the wireless terminal, and the second is to ensure the coverage bandwidth requirements of each terminal in the coverage area. Based on the above principles, we can determine the number of APS covered.

Second, from the perspective of Protection Investment, consider the capacity of the wireless switch. the life cycle of a network is roughly five years. within five years, the enterprise scale will grow and the enterprise network needs to be expanded, the selection of a wireless switch must take into account the scalability of AP management. At the same time, enterprise application services will also develop, such as wireless voice and video applications. The performance of wireless controllers must meet the needs of applications for several years. Nowadays, IEEE802.11a/B/g is the mainstream for wireless access. With the maturity of IEEE802.11n, the existing network needs to be seamlessly integrated with IEEE802.11n AP. Therefore, the wireless controller must be able to process both IEEE802.11a/B/g data and IEEE802.11n data.

Take the H3C wired and wireless integrated switch WX3024 as an example. WX3024 integrates the management, control, and data forwarding functions of Wireless AP. It is not only compatible with IEEE802.11a/B/g/n protocol, but also supports up to 48 APs. In general, an AP can meet the traffic requirements of 20 users and each user is 1 Mbps. From this perspective, 20 ~ 30 APS can meet the requirements of 400 ~ Enterprise applications with 600 people. Therefore, it can meet the needs of most small and medium sized networks.

Factors to consider when purchasing a wireless switch: outstanding product performance

Large-capacity AP management, wireless voice, wireless video, and IEEE802.11n access all make the performance of the wireless switch a problem that cannot be ignored. Considering the investment cost, performance restrictions cannot be solved without restrictions by improving the hardware. Therefore, the performance of the wireless switch must be measured from the hardware and software systems.

First of all, the current enterprise network, 1G core has been popularized, and IEEE802.11n AP upstream port mostly uses 1g, therefore, the wireless controller needs to provide 1g processing performance, not only provide 1g port, it is best to provide 10g scalability to provide higher network connection applicability.

Secondly, with the promotion of latency-sensitive services such as voice and the high-traffic requirements of IEEE802.11n AP processing, the centralized forwarding wireless controller can easily become a performance bottleneck. Therefore, it is best for the wireless controller to support distributed forwarding mode, that is, Control and Management packets are processed in a unified manner through the wireless controller, and data packets are directly converted to Ethernet packets on the Wireless AP, the tunnel encapsulation is not required and then sent to the wireless switch for processing, so as to solve the data forwarding performance bottleneck problem of the wireless controller.

There are not many devices that meet this performance requirement. The WX3024 mentioned above is one of them. According to the evaluation report of the online world evaluation lab, the WX3024 throughput is 100% in 64Byte-1518Byte. The minimum latency is 2.4 microseconds for 64 bytes in light load, 14 microseconds for 1518bytes in heavy load, and 144.055 Mbps for 11n wireless connections; the average latency of switching between two APS is 34.2 milliseconds. Outstanding performance, is one of the advantages to meet users' WLAN construction needs.

Three factors to consider when purchasing a wireless switch: Facilitating Wireless AP Power Supply

Solving the power supply problem of Wireless AP is an important prerequisite to ensure the flexibility of Wireless AP deployment location. This requires that the AP can achieve remote power supply through POE while providing local power supply. There are currently two solutions: the POE Power Supply Module and the POE Power Supply switch. To ensure the reliability of the POE power supply, it is the first choice to use the POE Power Supply switch to provide power for a single Wireless AP. Currently, the POE switch complies with the IEEE 802.3af standard, and the maximum output power is about 15 W, the mainstream IEEE802.11n AP in the industry requires more than 15 W of working power. In order to solve such power supply requirements, the POE + power supply switch of the IEEE 802.3at draft must be followed in order to truly take advantage of the performance advantages of IEEE802.11n.

The preceding WX3024 enables 24 Gigabit ports to provide both the POE power supply function and the PoE + power supply function. Each port can provide a maximum power of 25 W, the test shows that after the POE power supply function is enabled, the gigabit network interface of the WX3024 can supply power to the 802.11g and 802.11n AP through the network cable, you can also display the power supply of each POE-powered AP on the console, which is especially convenient for the deployment of IEEE802.11n AP. This is particularly important in the future when 802.11n may be "popular.