What are the advantages of a wireless switch

With the continuous warming of the wireless wave, more and more institutions, enterprises began to implement wireless local area network. Up to now, wireless LANs are typically made up of clients connected to access points, while access points provide security features, management functions, and other intelligence needed to control the wireless portion of the network.

The problem with this is that managing multiple access points is an impossible situation for networks that may involve hundreds of or thousands of of access points. In this case, a new product--wlan switch arises. Many network companies that have experienced research on Ethernet technology and switch technology are investing heavily in research and development of wireless switches. Wireless Exchange brings, not only to enhance the wireless network manageability, security and deployment capabilities, but also reduce the cost of networking, which has become a new development trend in the field of wireless LAN.

The traditional enterprise Wireless LAN uses the Ethernet switch + Enterprise-class AP 2-level mode, from the AP to achieve the bridge between the wireless LAN and wired network work. The wireless part of the whole network is composed of an AP-centered piece of coverage area. These areas work independently, AP as the center node of the region, bearing the data receiving, forwarding, filtering, encryption, client access, disconnection, authentication and other tasks. All administrative work, such as channel management and security settings, must be done separately for each AP. When the Enterprise wireless LAN scale is large, this becomes the network administrator quite heavy burden.

The new wireless switch solves this problem by centralizing management and simplifying the AP. In this architecture, the wireless switch replaces the original two-tier switch position, and the lightweight AP (Light-weight AP) (also known as the smart Antenna intelligent antenna) replaces the original enterprise-class AP. In this way, you can centralize security, mobility, QoS, and other features across the enterprise.

Although the wireless switch is connected to the AP in a similar way as a normal switch. However, it differs from the traditional approach in 802.11-frame processing: Instead of converting 802.11 frames into Ethernet frames, it encapsulates them into 802.3 frames and then transmits them to the wireless switch through a dedicated tunnel. From a wired network perspective, a wireless switch + lightweight AP is more like an enhanced AP that stretches out many external antennas. The advantages of wireless switches lie in three main areas:

Higher security

The application of wireless switches enables network administrators to become more flexible when mixing and matching user security, without having to upgrade or reconfigure AP. Security can include 802.1x, WEP, Tki protocols, AES, and so on, which includes authentication and encryption from layer 2nd to the layer 3rd VPN security mechanism.

Wireless LAN switching technology can also prevent intrusion of illegal access points. Traditional switch + Enterprise AP is not able to control illegal AP access, and check illegal AP access is also very troublesome. When using a wireless switch, when an illegal access point is connected to the network, the wireless LAN switch verifies that it is a permitted device or user. If the switch determines that the device is illegal, it shuts down illegal access points and automatically alarms.

Lower TCO

Traditional switch + Enterprise-class AP solution, because of the wireless signal modulation, data forwarding, security control and remote management processing are distributed, each AP needs a considerable processing power, and for the wireless switch + lightweight AP solution, because all the processing power is concentrated on a wireless switch, Distributed lightweight AP is only a very simple controlled device, only responsible for sending and receiving wireless signals, so no strong processing power, but also significantly reduce the cost, so the entire wireless LAN cost greatly reduced.

On the other hand, the wireless switch can automatically upgrade the firmware or update the configuration for the lightweight AP when the lightweight AP is turned on, unlike the normal AP, which requires an administrator to upgrade or update the firmware to a single device, greatly reducing the repetitive labor intensity of management and reducing overhead.

More efficient management

Wireless switches become the brains of wireless LAN systems by dynamically adjusting bandwidth, access control, QoS, and mobile user parameters through real-time monitoring of space, network growth, and user density.

Wireless switches can dynamically and intelligently adjust the channel and power of the lightweight AP, a breakthrough technology that is unique. For example, when a lightweight AP fails, the Wireless LAN switch automatically detects the failure point, directing the nearby lightweight AP to adjust power and channel settings to compensate. When a new AP joins, the wireless switch can automatically detect, upload the appropriate power and channel settings, and adjust the channel of the nearby AP and reduce its power to avoid conflict. When the AP is started, the wireless switch can also intelligently determine its firmware version, push a new version if necessary, and implement an AP automatic upgrade. Since the wireless switch is a dedicated system, a dedicated tunneling protocol and management Protocol is required between the AP and the switch, so a lightweight AP with the same vendor is required to be used, and the systems of different vendors are often incompatible. However, a standardized protocol on wireless switches is being drafted, at the core of which is the lightweight Access Point Protocol (Lwapp, light-weight access Points Protocol), which specializes in configuring information between switches and APS, To achieve interconnection between different manufacturers ' WLAN switches and APS.