Aruba's remote AP is enough of a paradigm shift that you cannot appreciate it unless you try it.

The "killer app" is a dual-mode wifi phone with a corporate extension that can be used in the hotel room to make cheap or free calls which are also encrypted all the way back to the corporate PBX. My international travelers are the ones who appreciate this the most - imagine a one hour conference call at hotel or roaming cell phone rates vs. just dialing via the PBX.

In my experience hotel wireless is usually quite poor - APs out in the hallways and low signal in the room. I've seen many hotels not even use a proper channel plan - even sometimes with APs on channels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. Plus, if you have more than one device you get to pay the hotel for each device you want to connect. Let's face it - we are all going to have more and more wifi enabled devices and we'll want them all to connect.

As for the hotel login pages - the remote AP can start up with a "backup" SSID that lets the user first connect and agree to the charges. The MAC address that gets registered to hotel is the APs - so all your devices can ten connect.

Supporting remote users is far simpler since they now have one and only one way of connecting - the same method at the office, home and on the road - for all their devices. As an IT manager/support person being able to also troubleshoot the wireless connection remotely - and not caring what DSL router or home AP is being used - is a huge advantage. By eliminating (well, almost) my VPN concentrators I now only have one remote access method to support - and it is the same at our head office, branch offices, home offices, and on the road.

My point - don't knock it unless you've tried it.