The wireless LAN switch is emerging as the missing piece that will let wireless networks scale beyond the small workgroup to full-blown enterprise implementations.

Until now, WLANs consisted of a client connecting to access points crammed full of security, management and other intelligence required to control the wireless portion of the network. The problem is that managing multiple access points was an unwieldy prospect for enterprise deployments that could include hundreds or thousands of access points.

Furthermore, installing access points has been a headache. Many companies hire consultants to conduct site surveys and radio frequency planning to determine the best place for access points. That's expensive. Also, WLANs initially offered such poor security that some IT managers have outright banned them in their offices.

It all adds up to lots of interest and lots of pilot projects, but not very many enterprisewide rollouts. "Right now, it's really been mainly trial deployments," says Russ Craig, research director for Aberdeen Group.

An array of point products have hit the market over the past couple of years aimed at solving these problems. But that means if IT departments need more than one of those products to solve multiple problems, they have to become system integrators, something few departments have the budget or manpower to do.

Enter the WLAN switch. "The conclusion a bunch of folks came up with is that you make the access point a less intelligent device, and you enable a switch or a router to communicate with all the access points," Craig says. "That way you can manage them remotely and configure them from a central panel." Most new products also deliver power over Ethernet to the switches instead of requiring AC power.

Combined, these features will enable less expensive and easier deployments, which could provide a huge boost to the WLAN market. "The uptake is going to be significant," Craig says.

The term switch is a bit of a misnomer, because while the WLAN switch offers similar management and control functions as a wireline switch, it doesn't do so on a port-by-port basis and it doesn't provide dedicated bandwidth to an end user. An exact parallel essentially would require dedicating a single blast of wireless coverage per user. Until that happens, the term switch will have to suffice for the current generation of product.

Start-ups and old timers in the networking and wireless worlds are flocking to the wireless switching market. The list includes AireSpace, Aruba Wireless Networks, Nortel, Proxim, Symbol Technologies, Trapeze Networks and Vivato. Although each aims to solve the same set of problems, they do so slightly differently, and while all but Vivato dumb down their access points, they do so to different degrees.

Dumbing down

"We're trying to drive the commoditization curve down so an access point becomes as cheap and mindless as an Ethernet port on your wall so you can put them wherever you need them," says David Callisch, marketing director for Aruba. Aruba's access point is light but not totally empty - it does air monitoring to watch for rogue access points.