Although autonomous access points are functional for a home or a small office/ho

Question

Although autonomous access points are functional for a home or a small office/home office setting in which there may be one or two APs, what happens in a large enterprise or college campus where there can be hundreds of APs? Because each AP is autonomous, a single wireless network configuration change would require that each AP be reconfigured individually, which can take an extended period of time and manpower to complete. A solution is to replace autonoumous access points with lightweight access points, also called thin access points. A lightweight access point does not contain the management and configuration functions that are found in autonomous access points; instead, these features are contained in a central device known as an enterprise WLAN controller or wireless switch What are their advantages? What are their disadvantages? Are there any security advantages to thin access points?

Explanation / Answer

1. Autonomous :- each AP has to be managed seperately

Controller based:- many AP can be managed by single controller no need to reach each AP and configure it seperatly.. all configuration are done at once.. but once the controller is down all the AP's will be down at once attached to it.. which is not the case of autonomous AP.

2. Centralization Enables Ease of Deployment When centralization is used, a lightweight access point only needs to find out the IP address of a wireless LAN controller—when deployed in Layer 2 mode. (When deployed in a remote subnet, the access point needs an IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway information.) The lightweight access point can also receive the wireless LAN controller IP address from a standard Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) server. After the lightweight access point contacts the wireless LAN controller, the controller programs all RF policies and wireless LAN policies onto the lightweight access point. Because all packets from the access points are placed into an LWAPP tunnel and subsequently sent to the wireless LAN controller, there is no need to extend special VLANs to individual access points.

3. Centralization Makes Upgrades Simple With the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, all lightweight access point images are embedded in the controller image. When a controller image is upgraded, it upgrades all of the access points that are associated with it. There is no need to deploy a specialized script, or create a special job on a centralized management station.

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