Wireless LAN: from providing convenience to replacing wired networks

Relying on the Trapeze "uninterrupted wireless" function, the wireless LAN will provide more robust connections, go out of the initial stage of providing mobility for enterprises, and gradually replace wired networks in the future.

In the past, wireless LAN was regarded as only applicable to applications that require mobility to improve efficiency. Therefore, they are usually deployed in conference rooms, university campuses, and other places, so that participants do not need to connect their laptops to the conference room network. Students are in lecture rooms, dining rooms, or dormitories, you can obtain learning resources anytime, anywhere.

Now, because the IEEE 802.11n standard can achieve a transmission speed of up to Mbps, industry authorities predict that wired networks will gradually migrate to wireless networks, while sales of wired Ethernet ports will gradually decline. Paul DeBeasi from the Burton Group pointed out: "The 802.11n standard will allow rapid development of wireless applications. At present, IT experts should begin to think about how to deploy, maintain, and effectively use wireless LAN ." Mike Jude from Nemertes Research added: "The war is over. Any new Wi-Fi deployment or renovation must comply with the 802.11n standard. In the future, more and more enterprises will adopt wireless technology when re-deploying the network ."

"Uninterrupted wireless" provides robust protection

However, before wireless technology completely replaces wired technologies such as desktop computers and telephones, it must be more robust than before. A few years ago, wireless security was the biggest obstacle to the deployment of wireless networks in enterprises. If you cannot provide a strong online connection forever, wireless networks cannot replace wired networks even if the cost is only 1/4 of the cost. To widely deploy mission-critical Wireless LAN within an enterprise, security and performance problems must be solved to provide uninterrupted network connections for the entire enterprise and a simpler management solution. For hospitals, it is necessary to ensure that access to a few megabytes of CT images can be completed at any care point in just a few seconds; for factories, production line monitoring must be performed in real time; for mobile kiosks, the operation should not be interrupted due to network instability; otherwise, a large amount of income will be lost.

The so-called uninterrupted wireless technology refers to the enterprise-level wireless LAN infrastructure that can run seamlessly even in the case of many device faults, extreme communication traffic, or repairs that usually require network interruptions. Voice calls are not interrupted, and data connection sessions are secured. You can obtain mission-critical network services at any time.

At present, the following two aspects are used to ensure uninterrupted Wireless LAN: component and equipment reliability and system reliability. We start with simpler components and device reliability.

Component and device reliability

The reliability of components and devices means to ensure port, path, and power supply elasticity. In fact, you can deploy a backup device or a device with redundant components, such as a dual-power device, to make the entire system architecture redundant. This is the first line of defense, and system reliability is designed to ensure the elasticity of the entire system. The reliability of components and devices must include the following:

Access Point with dual network port and Ethernet power supply function-the standby Ethernet port on the Access Point can provide dual network connection and can be powered through Ethernet. This is a basic requirement for elasticity.

Redundant wireless return device-if a wireless return device is used instead of an Ethernet to expand the wireless LAN, the Ethernet-like elasticity should be achieved. Any access point on the wireless return path stops working, and data can flow to the standby wireless path.

Automatic Adjustment of RF signals and RF pre-planning-if an access point fails, the surrounding access points will automatically adjust their RF signals to compensate for the loss. However, to implement this function, you must plan the Access Point Location and display the RF coverage before any deployment. The distance between access points must be close enough to make up for faults near the Access Point by automatically adjusting the RF power. Without complex 3D modeling, it is almost impossible to calculate the optimal location of the Access Point and adjust all variables related to power settings and channel selection. Pre-planning tools such as the RingMaster Wireless LAN Management Suite released by Trapeze Networks make these pre-planning operations easy.

L2 switching Protocol-the wireless LAN controller is still a switch. Therefore, it must support the inherent protocols of other L2 switches, including Spanning Tree Protocol, fast Spanning Tree Protocol, and IEEE 802.3ad/EtherChannel protocol.

Redundant hot-swappable power supply of the wireless LAN controller-in the enterprise environment, the failure of the wireless LAN Controller power will lead to network paralysis and cause losses to the enterprise's production, which is intolerable by the enterprise. The use of redundant power wireless LAN Controller allows you to effectively avoid these faults, while at the same time For you to easily replace faulty components to win time.

Server Load balancer and redundancy-the AAA Server is an extremely important task-critical resource. It not only verifies users, but also manages resources authorized to users to access and collects statistics on resources used by users. Therefore, redundancy and load balancing are required.

As a leading manufacturer of enterprise wireless LAN equipment, Trapeze designs Various wireless LAN devices to provide reliability of components and devices.

System Reliability Solution

High system availability is usually an optional requirement for wireless LAN. If you want higher reliability than the device level, you need to run additional protocols and purchase additional devices. The additional device will remain in standby mode until an event is detected and the fault recovery program starts. In the fault recovery program, the user's connection must be closed and restarted through the standby device.

This solution is similar to the vro redundancy protocol VRRP ). For wireless LAN Controllers, the best test scenario is to stop for 5 to 10 seconds, but it usually takes too long for secure network connections that transmit real-time data. The access point must be reset to reconnect to the standby controller, and the complete client verification process must be performed again. In other words, all clients directly or indirectly dependent on the faulty components will be affected when network connection is interrupted and the connection must be established again. Unfortunately, this is quite different from everyone's definition of uninterrupted networks. This solution requires additional configuration, protocols, and only components used in the event of a fault, which makes verification very difficult and therefore has serious defects. In addition, adding, moving, and replacing controllers or access points requires frequent maintenance of the configurations of the active and standby Wireless LAN Controllers. In practice, the idle time of the standby controller reaches 99%. When you need them, they may encounter configuration errors because there is no time or appropriate procedures for testing fault recovery.

Similar VRRP solutions may barely meet the most basic router redundancy requirements, but the wireless networks deployed within the enterprise must have both wireless security and true uninterrupted system reliability, A better solution is required. Trapeze Networks uses the NonStop Wireless feature to enhance its Smart Mobile architecture to meet the needs of a wide range of mission-critical Wireless LAN deployment, this new reliability can bring important advantages in performance, security and management. The NonStop Wireless feature of the Trapeze Smart Mobile architecture uses the server cluster principle, enabling applications to achieve scalability, load balancing, and elasticity in different types of hardware. Trapeze's wireless LAN Controller implements a virtual cluster, just like a huge Wireless LAN controller. The virtual Controller acts as a single controller to control all access points. They share the same configuration information database and collaborate with each other to determine the best load balancing.

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