Clustering to bring high availability to Wi-Fi

Wireless in the Enterprise This newsletter is sponsored by Microsoft E-Mail Security: All facts, no PR Download this exclusive Gartner Magic Quadrant report now and get an in-depth look at 18 enterprise e-mail security vendors and their offerings. Discover whose products are going to get more popular and whose popularity will decline, which companies are leading the pack and which are ripe for acquisition. Network World's Wireless in the Enterprise Newsletter, 06/25/07 Clustering to bring high availability to Wi-Fi By Joanie Wexler The concept of server clustering will soon be applied to wireless LAN controllers. The idea — introduced last week by WLAN vendor Trapeze Networks — is to bring the same high-availability benefits afforded by pooled data center server resources to the Wi-Fi environment. The capability is part of Phase 2 of Trapeze’s Smart Mobile Wi-Fi architecture. Smart Mobile blends centralized management and services with the option to distribute some traffic switching to access points for improved performance. Wireless Products Buyer's Guide From wireless adapters to WiMax repeaters, we've got detailed information on hundreds of products that will quickly help you pinpoint the hardware or software you're looking for. We've categorized each product into one of 10 specific wireless market segments, so you can drill down, compare and contrast products in only the areas you need. Click here for more.> The most prominent component of Phase 2 – which won’t be available until year-end – is a new rev to the Trapeze Mobility System Software (MSS), the smarts in Trapeze MX controllers that will also enable the resource pooling. According to David Cohen, Trapeze director of product marketing, enterprises can operate any mix of Trapeze MX controllers with the new MSS software, locate them anywhere in the network, and the devices collectively operate as one big virtual controller with automatic load balancing between them. The controllers auto-discover one another and new controllers dynamically configure themselves. APs associated with a downed switch automatically re-map to another available switch “in milliseconds” without administrator intervention, says Cohen, who declined to be more specific about the failover time. That setup should enable hitless, in-service software upgrades, too, which is interesting to Larry Griffith, director of technology operations at Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, a Trapeze shop in Glendale, Wis. “Currently, when we do a [routine] upgrade, the APs are down until we finish,” Griffith explains. “With APs automatically reconnecting to another controller, we should see no downtime.” The healthcare facility currently runs about 40 MX-400 controllers configured as primary devices and a similar-sized controller population configured as backups. The backups are always in use but are lightly loaded in case they need to accommodate backup traffic. In this configuration, “APs can fail over to a backup controller, but it takes at least a couple of seconds,” Griffith adds. “Quite a few applications – such as our Citrix applications – can’t tolerate that.” Smart Mobile 2 “should let us out of that model,” he says, which will also be important to the hospital’s forthcoming 802.11a-based voice deployment, to roll out next month using Polycom/SpectraLink NetLink 8000 handsets. “Voice, too, would be affected by such delays,” Griffith says. Other forthcoming components of Smart Mobile 2: * The MX-2800 controller, which Trapeze says supports 28Gbps of throughput, 512 APs and 12,000 active client devices. * The 802.11n AP that the vendor demonstrated at Interop last month.   What do you think? Post a comment on this newsletter

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Contact the author: Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in California's Silicon Valley who has spent most of her career analyzing trends and news in the computer networking industry. She welcomes your comments on the articles published in this newsletter, as well as your ideas for future article topics. Reach her at joanie@jwexler.com. This newsletter is sponsored by Microsoft E-Mail Security: All facts, no PR Download this exclusive Gartner Magic Quadrant report now and get an in-depth look at 18 enterprise e-mail security vendors and their offerings. Discover whose products are going to get more popular and whose popularity will decline, which companies are leading the pack and which are ripe for acquisition. ARCHIVE Archive of the Wireless in the Enterprise Newsletter. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007