IAP vs CAP

何時規劃 IAP (叢集運行) 何時規劃 CAP (控制器控管的AP)

其實沒有所謂的標準答案 雖然 單一IAP 叢集 可以支援128 部AP 但實際運作上 建議少於12部!!

建置 IAP 主要的考量是 簡單好管理 不需要採購控制器.. 期初規劃上成本比較低..可是如果 數量超過十部以上的時候 存取人員 超過200人以上 就會建議規劃 CAP....

IAP 會建議規劃在相同的安裝地點...同一個campus 下的網路 而且運作在相同VLAN上面...

剩下的練英文吧！！！

• In "larger" scale scenarios. "Larger" is, of course, completely subjective and means something different to everyone, but a workable guideline is anything more than 12 IAPs at a single physical location.
• Whenever it doesn't make sense to repeatedly buy and be concerned with Compute resources (CPU, RAM, Flash) in each IAP and it makes more sense to the customer and/or you to put a ton of Compute into specialized-for-that-purpose component of the architecture, i.e. a controller.
• Any time the customer's existing wired backbone is not already pretty finely tuned to deal with the Broadcasts / Multicasts that IAPs, being basically 802.11-802.3 bridges, kick out.
• Any time more than 1 IAP cluster of more than 64 IAPs would be recommended (yes, QA says the limit is 128 IAPs in a single cluster, but it's prudent to stay under half of what a system is capable of), one should be looking at a CAP architecture.
• Whenever the idea of having to add (a) VLAN tag(s) to each and every Edge switch and port off of which an IAP will hang is unattractive to the customer.
• If nearly all of the end user's traffic is North-South, i.e. going from wireless endpoints to some Server in the Data Center (where a controller is usually placed) or to the Internet, anyway then the tunneled architecture of CAPs and (a) controller(s) is just easier.
• When you're building a WLAN for subjectively large concentrations of users, e.g. 2000+, in a single physical location or campus of adjacent buildings.

This is not to say that IAPs don't have their place. They're completely the right answer for highly distributed brick-and-mortar / physical locations estates, e.g. Retail, enterprises with lots of small branches, smaller K-12 campi, etc.

Oh, and a key marketplace differentiator for our controller-less IAPs is that, a customer can start with the smaller-scale architecture of IAPs, and then, when they grow to requiring the larger-scale features of a CAPs-and-controller architecture their IAPs can be easily be converted to CAPs. None of our competitors can do that.