Capwap Mailing List: RE: (no subject)

[Pat R. Calhoun (pcalhoun]

>> As far as "light weight AP", I think some explanation is needed to
>> understand the difference between a "regular" and a light weight one.
>
> A fair question indeed. Although there is no clear definition of what a
> light weight access point is, in my mind (and implementation :), it means
> that all access control, policy enforcements, IDS functions, device
> management/configuration is handled in the AR.
> 
> Madjid>> thank you, this clears a lot of things and can be added to the
> draft :)

>From the draft 03, end of page 8:
   2.  Centralization of the bridging, forwarding, authentication,
      encryption and policy enforcement functions for a WLAN, to apply
      the capabilities of network processing silicon to the WLAN, as it
      has already been applied to wired LANs.

I could add more if it is needed.

> Does this mean, all the network's internal node in need of communication
> with AP
> (say a policy server or an authentication server) need to go through AR to
> get to 
> AP?
No - these functions exist in the AR, not in the AP. So there is no 
communication per se, except for as I note below.

> I am not entirely against that, but just like to understand the
> architecture.
> Also, the BoF desciption says that NAS functionality will be planted into
> AP,
> is that Lwapp philosophy as well?
nope, into the AR. The goal is to REMOVE the NAS functionality from the AP.

> I have an issue with having the policy enforcements being handled by AR
> though,
>       -for QoS policies, this means, packet filtering and policing is done
> at AR and 
>       not AP, hence you run the risk of having unauthorized (or
> nonconforming users)
>       clog the backhaul.
>       -For security policies, you let rouge traffic penetrate the network,
> shouldn't 
>       filtering be implemented in the AP?

nope. The protocol has a message from the AR to the AP allowing "filters" to be 
created on the AP. This is called the Add-Mobile/Delete-Mobile message.

PatC