Wireless vendors are attempting to ease the pain of branch office computing with multifunction networking products that replicate the headquarters LAN experience and require little or no IT expertise. But don't forget that at any site with more than one possible WAN path to take you need routing.

For example, about 70% of enterprises use MPLS VPN services and another 12% plan to deploy them, according to the Webtorials 2009 MPLS VPN State-of-the-Market Report. About 400 Webtorials subscribers surveyed indicate that MPLS VPNs are coming into vogue primarily because they are so well suited to real-time collaboration applications, such as VoIP and unified communications.

These applications often involve direct site-to-site communication to avoid the latency incurred with hub-and-spoke networking, which requires Branch A to make a pit stop at Point C (the data center) in order to communicate with Branch B. For direct site-to-site communications, branch participants in the MPLS VPN WAN need routing.

Aruba Network's latest low-cost multifunction Remote Access Points (RAPs) "are not routers," says Steven Perkins, senior director of business development at Aruba. "They do policy-based forwarding on the LAN, to and through the WAN" while supporting 3G cellular as a WAN connectivity option, he says. They also require new software on the company's centralized WLAN controllers.

However, Aruba's VBN 600 Series Controller, scheduled to ship next month, does perform routing functions, Perkins says. It has a list price of $1,495. Low-end Cisco Integrated Services Routers (the 800 series) start at about $1,000.

Motorola's Wireless Enterprise Branch Office Solution, the company's AP-7131 802.11a/b/g/n APs with enhanced network services and mesh capabilities, also supports the cellular last-mile WAN connection option as a backup WAN link. It also supports the company's own point-to-point and multipoint fixed-wireless bridges for WAN connectivity.

Though it is described as being able to self-heal around WAN failures, the Motorola product supports static IP routing, says Motorola Senior Director Manish Rai. Static IP routing does not adapt dynamically to network topology changes or equipment failures.

It's true that many telework sites pretty much tap the increasingly centralized and virtualized data center only for application access. In such cases, it's not so much the basic routing, or best-path selection, that users need as rich Layer 3 functions that have been built on top of IP routing.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.