|
Right sizing wireless LANs (WLANs) for your business and budget is a matter of picking the vendor with the most efficient network architecture. Choose a WLAN with inefficient
radio frequency (RF) antennas, controller architecture, and management, and the price will escalate as more components are needed to achieve desired coverage and capacity levels. Wi-Fi runs over an unlicensed RF spectrum. So it is prone to wildly fluctuating performance as conditions change. Automated RF management and control capabilities are
required to ensure that performance remains consistent, high, and reliable.
Some controller-based vendors require that all data traffic be backhauled to the controller for forwarding, while others more efficiently handle this function in distributed access points (APs). Scaling controller capacity in tandem with access capacity increases some vendors' system costs. Other "must-haves" or "nice-to-haves" such as mesh networking or voice support may be priced separately.
This paper examines the required infrastructure components and presents vendor cost comparisons (all public MSRP pricing as of 7/1/2009) for Cisco, Meru Networks, HP/Colubris, Aruba Networks, and Ruckus Wireless for a "typical" enterprise WLAN.
Two scenarios are examined: one for coverage only and the other combining coverage and network capacity. Scenario A provides WLAN coverage for 1,000 users in a 500,000-squarefoot space; a mixture of worker cubicles and common areas. Scenario B accounts for both WLAN coverage and a 10Mbps per-client capacity minimum for QoS in a multimedia
environment. The aggregation backbone network requirement is 10Gbps with a fully redundant controller back-end for nonstop availability. Detailed breakdowns of respective vendors' pricing begin on page 6.
|
