* Hospital chooses distributed network for high uptime
The issue of deploying the “right” Wi-Fi architecture for a given environment persists, as enterprises consider extending their Wi-Fi infrastructures, adding IP voice traffic to their networks and eventually upgrading to higher-speed 802.11n networks.
By the term “architecture,” I mean the design for how various Wi-Fi related functions are dispersed over equipment such as Wi-Fi access points (AP) and Wi-Fi controllers. It’s a pretty consistent enterprise desire to provision, configure, and manage distributed Wi-Fi network elements from a central station. Less obvious is where certain functions such as basic traffic forwarding, end-user authentication, QoS, cryptography, RF management and dynamic power control should take place – centrally or in distributed Wi-Fi equipment.
For Wayne Memorial, a 98-bed hospital in Honesdale, Pa., the architectural question was a fundamental one: How to achieve redundancy for improved network uptime at the best price. The facility is currently installing a wireless LAN to support a bedside medication verification application that will go live next year.
Wayne Memorial selected Colubris Wi-Fi network gear because the APs have “all the intelligence they need to act as a stand-alone endpoint,” says Tom Hoffman, manager of information services at the hospital. He explains that this means that the Wi-Fi network will remain available if a controller or a nearby AP should fail.
In his view, other designs, which leverage very “thin” APs (those that put most functionality in a centralized controller), would have required the installation of redundant controllers to ensure network availability. This would have been a cost issue for his organization, he says. In the distributed Colubris environment, he uses one controller per network segment. “A controller could fail, but that wouldn’t mean the network would be down,” he says.
