Joel Vincent

WLAN deployment is still in its relative infancy in terms of broad organizational rollouts, but WLAN administrators are already listing management complexity as one of their top headaches. Despite elegant management software interfaces and tools for automating site surveys, most WLANs in use today require ongoing manual intervention to optimize AP configurations for traffic mix, user density, and other variables. The fundamental problems are the limited bandwidth that must be shared across the WLAN, and the variable nature of RF signals and their susceptibility to interference and performance degradation. Under the current conditions, WLAN management seems to be more black magic than science. But it doesn't have to be. When WLAN architecture is designed from the ground up to accommodate and simplify issues that are specific to wireless transmission, WLAN management ... (more)