Cisco Cisco Aironet 1600i Access Point 백서

Farpoint Group White Paper – September 2012 

 

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additional considerations here: the price of the system (capital expense, or CapEx), 
performance (in terms of throughput, capacity, range where required, rate vs. 
range, and other related features), price/performance (or, in other words, value), 
and the availability of enterprise-class, “big-system” AP and management features 
with smaller-system convenience, ease-of-use, and pricing. 

 

•  A focus on operating expense – It is, however, not just CapEx that should be 

considered in a cost analysis here. Of greater importance, as we implied above, is 
the minimization of operating expense, or OpEx, which incldues all costs related 
to keeping the system up and running after it is initially powered on. Ease of use 
is critical here for just that reason – while TCO is a function of both CapEx and 
OpEx, OpEx will usually be the far larger component due to the labor-intensive 
nature of this element. We generally recommend substituting CapEx for OpEx via 
the selection of more capable solutions as a key optimization in the TCO 
calculation – in other words, spend a bit more on solutions that save money across 
the operational life of the system. We can thus maximize operations-staff 
productivity in midmarket settings via, again, ease-of-use. 

 

•  Scalability – Growth is guaranteed in any networking environment, as the number 

of users, devices, and applications (and their corresponding traffic demands) all 
increase. While an key element of ease of use is the automatic configuration and 
re-configuration of radio parameters such as channel assignments and RF transmit 
power levels, at some point additional APs will be required, and advanced 
technologies embodied in new products (see the sidebar, “What about 802.11ac?” 
for more on this) will offer advantages in throughput and thus capacity. All of this 
implies that non-disruptive growth must be a core element of any solution 
addressing midmarket needs, again with operational ease-of-use and cost 
minimization as primary goals. 

 
So all of this begs a key question: what features should midmarket firms look for in 
WLAN systems so as to accomplish all of the above? 
 
 
The Evolution of Midmarket WLAN Systems: Meeting the Key 
Requirements 
 
The answer to this question involves an analysis – and successful implementation – of 
two key components of a WLAN system solution: the access points under consideration, 
and, especially, the system’s management console. Management functionality (see Figure 
2) has become so important in all of the above that we frequently list it as the first item in 
requests for proposal (RFPs) that we frequently prepare on behalf of clients. But, of 
course, the capabilities implemented in APs also go a long way towards meeting these 
objectives, so a careful analysis of their feature set is also in order. 
 
As we noted above, midmarket firms require the same WLAN functionality as larger 
enterprises. Among the key AP and other WLAN system features required are: