WiNG 5 COMPETITIVE GUIDE COMPETITIVE REPORT MOTOROLA TECH MARKETING LAB

Transcription

1 WiNG 5 COMPETITIVE GUIDE COMPETITIVE REPORT MOTOROLA TECH MARKETING LAB

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS WiNG 5 Differentiators... 1 Introduction to 11ac... 1 Architecture Does Matter... 2 Architecture Comparison... 3 Unified Hierarchical Management... 5 Smart Cache... 6 Channel Agility... 7 Modules... 7 Virtualized Platform... 8 Bonjour Gateway WiNG 5 DIFFERENTIATORS Distributed Control Plane architecture differentiation Unified hierarchical management Smart Cache Channel agility Modules 2 INTRODUCTION TO 11ac Also known as Gigabit Wi-Fi, ac represents more of an evolutionary than revolutionary step up from n, because the newer standard relies substantially on algorithms already ironed out during the development of n. Among the technologies that n and ac have in common: Channel bonding for wider channels and greater throughput Multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) antenna technology to avoid multipath interference problems and improve data throughput Beamforming, or concentrating signal strength from an antenna toward one or more client devices Air time fairness to prevent overall network performance from falling back to the transmission speed of the slowest device on the network. In other words, just as an a client joining a 5GHz n network no longer degrades an n client s performance in the 5GHz band, a 5GHz-band n client is not expected to degrade the performance of an ac client. PAGE 1

3 802.11ac will operate in the 5GHz band, where there are more non-overlapping channels available for design flexibility than have been available in the 2.4GHz range occupied by b and its successor, g n can run in either band. Representing a fifthgeneration of Wi-Fi (timeline, page 9), ac will make use of 80MHz- and, eventually, 160MHz-wide channels using the channel bonding technique, which aggregates 20MHz channels together for a larger wireless pipe within the spectrum. Channel bonding in Wi-Fi was introduced with n, which allowed for aggregating two 20MHz channels for a maximum 40MHz channel width ac pushes the technology even farther. As with most generations of new networking technology, getting a boost in throughput and, presumably, resulting application performance is the main benefit expected from ac. As noted, there is flexibility in how ac is deployed in terms of number of antennas and spatial streams and the width of the channels used, which all affect performance and number of devices supported. For example, if 10 clients today each use 30Mbps from an n AP that delivers 300Mbps throughput using three spatial streams, at least twice as many (20 clients) could easily share an 11ac AP that delivers 600Mbps. This is particularly beneficial in very dense deployments, such as universities, business offices and manufacturing floors, where a number of devices are collocated closely together. In addition to enabling the support of wider channels and double the number of spatial streams than n, ac also achieves performance improvements from enhanced coding. Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) jumps from 64 QAM in n to 256 QAM in ac. The greater the QAM number, the more bits per symbol that can be transmitted and the faster the data rate of the wireless. 3 ARCHITECTURE DOES MATTER As customers start deploying ac wireless networks that are capable of supporting more bandwidth, choosing the right WLAN architecture will be critical to realizing the full potential of ac. ARCHITECTURE EVOLUTION 1.0 DISTRIBUTED DATA With the mass adoption of n technologies, we saw an evolution in WLAN architecture where traffic was beginning to be offloaded at the edge, i.e. at the access point. Practically every WLAN vendor in the industry has architecture that addresses distributed data. ARCHITECTURE EVOLUTION 2.0 DISTRIBUTED CONTROL PLANE The next phase in this architecture evolution cycle was bringing the control plane closer to the edge, i.e. at the access point. While vendors like Aruba (Aruba Instant) and Cisco (FlexConnect) choose to go down the path of creating a completely different architecture to support this new evolution in architecture, Motorola is the only vendor in the industry that built its architecture (WiNG 5) from the ground up to support any customer architecture. Aruba maintains two different software platforms AOS (Aruba Operating System) that runs on their controller platform targeted for large campus deployments and Instant AP for distributed controller-less environments. PAGE 2

4 ARCHITECTURE COMPARISON GETTING TO THE BOTTOM To compare and contrast the architecture of different vendors and show how WiNG 5 is superior, it is important to understand the three layers or planes of WLAN architecture the Management Plane, Control Plane and the Data Plane as depicted in Figure 1. Figure 1: WLAN architecture planes Management Plane (Configuration, Statistics) Control Panel (Roaming, RF-Management, Security) Data Plane (Packet forwarding) Management Plane Management Plane is the component in the WLAN architecture that allows the network administrators to manage the network pushing configuration to the network elements (Access Points and Controllers), and gathering statistics from network elements for centralized viewing. It carries administration traffic and does not have a huge impact on the network performance. The protocol used in the management plane could be SNMP or proprietary vendor specific protocol like MINT, as used by Motorola WiNG 5 Access Points and Controllers, or CAPWAP, as used by Cisco wireless infrastructure or PAPI, as used by Aruba. Data Plane Data Plane is the path that the data traffic takes through the wireless infrastructure. Two popular industry methods are tunneled and bridged. In the tunneled mode the wireless traffic is encapsulated using a standard protocol like IPSEC / GRE / L2TP, or proprietary protocol like MINT or CAPWAP and forwarded to a WLAN controller from where it breaks out. In the bridged mode, the traffic breaks out from the AP itself without having to forward the traffic to the controller. The tunneled mode of data forwarding was very popular in a/b/g deployments. With the evolution and mass adoption of the n standard, the throughput on the wireless traffic saw an increase of almost 10 times. Tunneling all the traffic made the controller a single choke point for the wireless traffic. In the distributed data forwarding mode, the wireless traffic is bridged from the access point instead of having to forward it to the controller freeing it up from being the choke point. With n we saw a shift in WLAN architecture to a distributed data forwarding mode, and going forward ac will just expedite this trend. In the tunneled mode architecture, all the policies applied to the data traffic like firewall rules, QoS was enforced at the controller. As WLAN architecture evolves to a distributed data forwarding mode, where Figure 2: Control plane vs distributed plane competitive WLAN architecture comparison PAGE 3

5 traffic is now bridged locally off the AP, so should the firewall enforcements and QoS policies. The access points should now not just be capable of bridging the traffic but also capable of running advanced services like Layer 2 and Layer 3 stateful firewall, role based enforcement, QoS enforcement etc. Control Plane Control Plane in wireless architecture corresponds to the component that enables intelligent WLAN services pertaining to RF-Management, roaming, security, QoS, firewall etc. Most of these functions not only require intelligence at the Access Point, but also require direct coordination between access points. In a centralized control plane based architecture, this intelligence usually resides on the controller. The controller also becomes a single point to coordinate information between access points. A true decentralized (distributed) architecture moves these control plane functions from the controller to the access point. The intelligence to perform these functions should reside on the access point and the access point should be able to coordinate amongst them directly (without the controller) and share information to enable these intelligent functions. It is pretty straight forward to evaluate the degree of decentralization of different vendor s architecture. You should start with two simple questions: 1. What wireless functions are lost when a controller becomes unavailable? RF-Management: auto power and channel selection, client coverage hole recovery, AP coverage hole recovery, load balancing Roaming: OPMK Caching, application (firewall) state migration, Layer-2 / Layer-3 roaming Security: RADIUS Server (can new 802.1x clients), block peer to peer communication across APs, Captive Portal (can new guest clients connect) 2. What functions are lost when traffic is bridged locally off the access point instead of being tunneled all the way to the controller? Security: Applying stateful L2 / L3 firewall on the AP, Firewall state migration (can FTP traffic continue as the clients roam from one AP to another when stateful firewall i.e. enabled) QoS: IGMP Snooping, broadcast / multicast optimization, multicast to unicast conversion, VLAN pooling, DSCP marking etc. Motorola s WiNG 5 is the only architecture that brings the entire control plane functionality to the edge, i.e. at the access point, without any compromise in service. Figure 3: Competitive architecture comparison Motorola Aruba Cisco Ruckus Aerohive Meraki Distributed Data Y WiNG 5 Tunneled Data Y WiNG 5 Distributed Control Y WiNG 5 AOS* Y Instant Y AOS Y Instant Requires AOS Controllers AOS N Instant Y FlexConnect Y Y Y Y FlexConnect Y Y N Y MX Series FlexConnect N N Y Partial Controller-less branch Y 128 Instant AP Y AOS N FlexConnect 100 N Y Y Single Architecture to support Large and Small Distributed Sites Y N N N Does not support controller-less sites Y with limitations Y with limitations * Aruba Operating System PAGE 4

6 4 UNIFIED HIERARCHICAL MANAGEMENT ONE VIEW Motorola s WiNG 5 is the only architecture that supports any customer deployment of any scale without any compromise. Motorola s WiNG 5 supports distributed branch site of any size from small single cell AP sites, medium controller less multiple AP sites and large controller deployed remote sites. With WiNG 5.5, the NOC controller can adopt and manage controllers deployed at remote site, pushing configuration to the remote controllers, the same that a controller-less site would be managed. Competitive solutions from Cisco and Aruba would have to rely on multiple architectures to support each of these customer deployment needs. Aruba s Instant AP is their solution for controller-less branch, but they cannot scale beyond 1000 clients in a single site. For larger sites they would have to deploy a local controller. However, the operating systems Figure 4: WiNG 5 hierarchical management and One View running on these two Aruba architectures are very different, and hence customer is forced to mix-and-match multiple different operating systems for varied deployment needs. This also means that there is a feature and configuration disparity as the customer would have to deploy two completely different WLAN platforms from a single vendor to support different size branch sites. This also restricts the ability for the customer to scale their WLAN network in the future. Cisco s distributed deployment is addressed by their FlexConnect architecture. But with FlexConnect, all the control plane intelligence resides on the controller. The remote site has to depend on the NOC controller for all critical WLAN functions like RF-Management, roaming etc. making the design less resilient. Figure 5: Unified management comparison Motorola Aruba Cisco NOC Components NX 95xx Controller running ADSP in One View Mode Airwave NCS Prime; MSE 7200 Controller FlexController 7500/8500 Small Sites (<10 APs) APs Instant APs FlexConnect APs Medium Sites (<100 APs) APs Instant APs FlexConnect APs Large Sites (>100 APs) Controller with APs Local Controller with APs Controller with APs Different operating system Different feature sets Different management Flexconnect only does local bridging Control plane resides at NOC Controller PAGE 5

7 5 SMART CACHE The NX 6500 branch controller supports content caching for video traffic over https. When the client requests a video for the first time (for example, from YouTube, the video can be downloaded from the web and automatically cached by the NX Next time any client requests the same video, it will be served from the cache, saving WAN bandwidth and providing end users with a better video viewing experience. This is especially useful in retail stores, where customers often watch many product or do it yourself videos. The NX 6500 content caching engine also allows these product videos to be pre-loaded. Figure 6: Motorola Solutions Smart Cache in action Figure 7: Content Cache feature comparison Motorola Cisco Aruba Meraki Aerohive Ruckus Content Cache Yes No No Yes No No PAGE 6

8 6 CHANNEL AGILITY Channel Agility is the ability of the radio to adjust bandwidth on a per-packet basis to mitigate interference. Channel Agility can improve the performance of the network by almost 9x in the presence of a nearby n access point. Figure 8: Motorola Solutions 11ac channel agility Channel Agility technology is embedded into Qualcomm s ac chipset. Since bandwidth selection has to be performed on a per-packet basis, the radio driver should be one to perform this. Qualcomm is the only chipset that supports Channel Agility. The other popular ac chipset from Broadcom (used by Aruba, Cisco, Meru, Aerohive and Meraki) does not support channel agility in their latest radio and hence this is a feature that will not be supported by these vendor s 11ac access points. Figure 9: Channel agility support comparison Motorola Cisco Aruba Meraki Aerohive Ruckus Channel Agility Yes No No No No? 7 MODULES The Motorola AP ac access point has the ability to have modules plugged in through an USB interface to support other applications like WIPS sensor, Zigbee radio, ambient sensor, camera etc. This allows customers to deploy additional services without having to pull additional Ethernet drops or dedicated hardware for these applications, reducing costs. Figure 10: Access point module support comparison Motorola Cisco Aruba Meraki Aerohive Ruckus Application Modules Yes Yes limited applications No No No No PAGE 7

9 8 VIRTUALIZED PLATFORM The VX 9000 software based controller combines the power of virtualization with Motorola Solutions industry-leading WiNG Controller, creating a virtual controller in a class of its own. The cost-effectiveness of virtualization combines with high-performance advanced wireless services, endless scalability, superior deployment flexibility and centralized management of the entire wireless network through a single windowpane, bringing a new level of simplicity, cost-efficiency and much needed hardware independence to the wireless LAN. Cloud-Ready scalability With the VX 9000, you simply pay as you grow just purchase the amount of access point licenses you need today and easily add whatever you need in the future. There is no need to purchase a different controller for different access point capacities each instance of the VX 9000 can support up to 10,000 access points, giving the real scalable solution for cloud deployments. Deployment flexibility Not only is the VX 9000 easy to deploy, it also brings a new level of ease to WLAN deployment. The VX 9000 supports virtually any server and all the leading, commercially available Hypervisors for fast and seamless integration into your existing network infrastructure without adding any new hardware. In addition, you can run multiple instances of the VX 9000 on a single server, substantially reducing cost, space and power requirements in the Network Operations Center (NOC). With the ability to run in a private or public cloud, you have the freedom to choose the model that works best for your business install on your own servers in your NOC or lease a server in the public cloud. And with built-in hierarchical management, equipment discovery and configuration is automated, bringing true plug-and-play simplicity to the WLAN deployment. Figure 11: VX 9000 Virtualization PUBLIC CLOUD or NOC VX 9000 Software VM VX 9000 Dashboard HYPERVISOR Citrix Xen VMware ESXi Hyper-V WiNG Captive Portal Heat Map Analytics WAN/ISP Branch Office Small Office/Store Fronts PAGE 9 PAGE 8

10 Non-stop service availability With virtualization, server resource utilization improves, server management is simplified and the need for single purpose appliances is eliminated. In addition, live migration improves service availability the VX 9000 can be automatically and seamlessly moved in the event of a server issue. Figure 12: Virtualized Platform Comparison Motorola Cisco Aruba Meraki Aerohive Ruckus Virtualized WLAN Controller Offering Yes Yes No No Yes No Scale 10, NA NA 6,000 NA ESXi Yes Yes NA NA Yes NA Hyper-V Yes No NA NA No NA Amazon EC2 Yes No NA NA No NA XEN Yes No NA NA No NA 9 BONJOUR GATEWAY The WiNG 5 Bonjour Gateway solution was designed to make Bonjour work in multi-vlan / subnet network. A WiNG 5 access point or controller--which is in the same network as the device offering the service, learns and builds a list of service available on that network. When a client on a different subnet requests for the service, the controller or access point acting as the gateway responds to the request. Figure 13: Bonjour Gateway Support Motorola Cisco Aruba Meraki Aerohive Ruckus Bonjour support on Controller Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Bonjour support on AP Yes No Yes IAP No Controller based deployment Yes Yes No PAGE 10 PAGE 9

11 Part number: CG-WING5 Printed in USA 03/14. MOTOROLA, MOTO, MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS and the Stylized M Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Motorola Trademark Holdings, LLC and are used under license. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners Motorola Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. MOTOROLA WLAN UNLEASH OPTIMAL