“The early days of wireless LANs were full of technical challenges for both the integrator and end user alike. RF planning was a black art unfamiliar to those more used to the limitations of wired Ethernet, new security threats such as rogue Access Points (APs) meant that security had to be overhauled, and true mobility was limited by the use of port based VLANs. But in the last two years, wireless LANs (WLANs) have become simple to deploy, have little or no impact on the existing wired infrastructure, and are inherently secure to use. As a result, they allow integrator and end-user to focus on application deployment and use.
The truth is that early wireless solutions looked primarily to solve the problem of ‘getting the Radio Frequency (RF) part of the product right’ on the basis that if the RF worked, then the rest of the infrastructure – APs and switches at Layer 2, and VLANs at Layer 3 – would simply be integral to the wired network.
However, wireless LANs cannot operate simply as a wireless extension of the wired network for several reasons:
The full article is published in the September issue of Comms Business Magazine