Intelligence at the network's edge -- defining the future of wireless networking architecture

09.11.2010

A more adaptive, reliable and intelligent architecture takes factors like these into consideration. It leverages the network's distributed intelligence to help unlock the full value of 802.11n solutions so they can both deliver a better quality of experience and make IT budgets go further.

By having more intelligence in the access points, during outages these access points can also serve a bridging function to reduce latencies. Since security is as important to the organization as solid network coverage and availability, it is important to make sure that any distributed architecture has enough application awareness to be self-healing without dropping VoIP calls and that it is able to deliver the same firewall capabilities as hub-and-spoke to avoid compromising QoS. This helps maintain network services throughout outages, ensuring the organization and its assets continue to benefit from continued local QoS prioritization, authentication, security policies and direct routing as well as backhaul failover to 3G.

Greater intelligence at the edge of the network can also make go further, offering advantages in both capital and operational expenditures. Adding 802.11n access points to the network can be less expensive than adding more controllers, and can actually result in significant savings since access points with greater intelligence can reduce the number of controllers needed.

Since capital expenditures are largely a function of the number of access points and controllers plus the cost of the sensors, distributed network intelligence offers certain CapEx advantages when combined with 802.11n performance. For one thing, it requires a much lower controller-to-access point ratio, with higher power access points covering a greater area.

Now with distributed traffic management, a single controller can oversee up to eight times the number of access points. This frees up controllers to focus on large scale network and policy management as well as other services, resulting in a more efficient architecture. Access points with built-in sensors for security and troubleshooting can also eliminate extra installation and power costs that would come with a separate sensor network.