Capwap Mailing List: FW: [Capwap] So many architectures, so little time... - take 2

[Abhijit Choudhury (Abhijit]

Title: RE: [Capwap] So many architectures, so little time... - take 2

One key objective that has been discussed in this group

is INTEROPERABILITY.  It's not clear how you achieve

interoperability between a WTP from vendor X and an AC

from vendor Y, if you don't support the same protocols on

all three categories that you have pointed out.  Sure you can

achieve interoperability between the two, if you support the

superset of all possible encapsulations, but then you are no

better off than you are currently.  That is why there is need

for a standard.   And it's easier to implement in hardware or software

if there is one standard protocol instead of three.

 

We really should strive towards a unified tunneling protocol for control

and data, although you can have separate connections

for each, and different security on each.

 

But if this group stays away from specifying a common

protocol for control/mgmt and data between the WTP

and AC, or specifies one and not the other,

there cannot be true interoperability even within

the split-MAC architecture family.

 

Abhijit

---

From: Sudhanshu Jain
Sent: Tue 8/10/2004 7:19 PM
To: 'Yang, Lily L'; Shehzad Merchant; Shankar Narayanaswamy; Abhijit Choudhury
Cc: capwap [at] frascone.com
Subject: RE: [Capwap] So many architectures, so little time... - take 2

Problem we have to solve can be classified into three categories.

* Control & Management of WTP
* Control & Management of STA
* 802.11 Data

Since different functionalities has different requirements, it is possible to address them with separate sets of mechanism.

First version of CAPWAP control protocol should address first functionality with provision to communicate
* Tunneling mechanism
* Information about MAC implementation (Local/Split/Centralized) etc.

-Suds