Introduction

If you are reading this book, I probably do not have to convince you that wireless LANs (WLANs) are experiencing dramatic growth and are rapidly becoming an entrenched technology in every day life. Today, we see that WLANs have become a competitive differentiator for hotels, multi-tenant dwellings, coffee shops and other establishments where customers are expected and encouraged to stay for more than a few quick moments. Conversely, it is quickly becoming a negative distinction to not have WLAN services in those circumstances.

Like the personal computer revolution before it, as WLAN products permeate applications from the least significant to the mission critical, product lines are stratifying to serve those new and different market segments. However, with this increased popularity and diversity, comes increased deployment at the hands of those that do not understand, and should not need to, the intricacies of RF propagation and network management, often resulting in poor performance and disillusionment with the technology.

To date, two architectures have emerged as the leading approaches to WLAN implementation: independent and dependent. The independent architecture was first to arrive and is a logical extension of standard bridging practices followed in the wired LAN (Ethernet) world. With this approach, access points (APs) are treated as individually managed edge devices. Each AP is configured and managed independently from other peer APs irrespective of whether or not the APs belong to a specific administrative domain.