Start-ups pushed Cisco to take different point of view.
Cisco was all for fat wireless LAN access points, then it bought Airespace for about $500 million.
This is one argument that was decisively ended. And then started up again.
Historically, wireless LANs (WLAN) relied on “fat” access points, which handled a wide array of tasks in software, each a separate IP address wired directly into Ethernet switches. All that changed around 2001 with the introduction of the WLAN switch (usually now called a controller) from start-ups such as Airespace, Aruba Wireless Networks and Trapeze Networks.
Most of the access point’s functions were shifted to the controller, which incorporated the Ethernet switch. The argument: centralize management, security administration, client handoffs and more. That argument seemed over when Cisco paid almost half a billion dollars to acquire Airespace.
But during the past 12 months, WLAN vendors such as Trapeze have been offloading jobs like data forwarding from the controller back to the access points. The new argument: less load on the controller, no single point of network failure, and reduced network latency and jitter.
In May 2007 a brand new start-up, Aerohive bet the farm on a more radical version of this idea. Areohive distributes all of the controller functions through a mesh of intelligent access points, each with its own IP address. They work cooperatively to do the task formerly done by a separate controller. Aerohive won’t dethrone Cisco in the WLAN space anytime soon, but it suggests renewed efforts to distribute specifically wireless intelligence more pervasively through the network.
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