Cisco gets hip to mesh, WLAN management

Cisco Systems did a bit of catching up last week when it finally announced products to support centrally managed, large Wi-Fi and mesh networks for outdoor WLAN deployments.

The giant networking company's Unified Wireless Network uses a centralized architecture for deploying WLANs across the enterprise. The devices come almost a year to the day after Symbol introduced the first device to the market, the WS 2000 Wireless Switch. As opposed to Symbol's and those from competitors that followed, Cisco's Wi-Fi solution previously required a network administrator to manage one AP (access point) at a time.

Taking the management focus one step further, Cisco also announced that the WLAN management modules will be integrated with its flagship enterprise and branch-office switching and routing products. The WLAN control module will be integrated with both the Catalyst 6500 enterprise router, which is capable of controlling as many as 1,500 APs, and the 2800 and 3800 branch-office routers, which control a maximum of six APs.

Cisco's mesh-networking entry, the Aironet 1500 Series, is an outdoor wireless AP that comes with two radios. The Wi-Fi radio handles access, and the second radio is dedicated to wireless interconnectivity, or meshing, across wireless and wired APs.