Capwap Mailing List: Re: FW: Some Thoughts on WTP versus Centralized Encryption

[Sudhanshu (sudhanshu.ietf]

I think it is an interesting observation and should be considered to address
issues #138.

The whole paradigm of centralized WLAN is related to ease of deployment and
management. And we should not forget that CAPWAP WG is charted under O&M,
although we are trying to develop control plane and data plane besides
operation and management under single spec.

_Suds


-----Original Message-----
From: Dorothy.Gellert [at] nokia.com [mailto:Dorothy.Gellert [at] nokia.com] 
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 9:59 PM
To: capwap [at] frascone.com
Cc: margaret [at] thingmagic.com; dave [at] frascone.com
Subject: [Capwap] FW: Some Thoughts on WTP versus Centralized Encryption

Posting this on behalf of Bernard as it seems to have bounced off the WG
list..  

-Dorothy 

-----Original Message-----
From: ext Bernard Aboba [mailto:bernard_aboba [at] hotmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 4:10 PM
To: capwap [at] frascone.com
Cc: Gellert Dorothy (Nokia-SIR/MtView)
Subject: Some Thoughts on WTP versus Centralized Encryption

At IETF 68, Dorothy asked me to look at this issue and post some
thoughts.

One way to think about this issue is from the point of view of an IT
administrator who is considering the deployment of WTPs within the
enterprise.

One of the potential benefits of CAPWAP in such a situation is to
potentially provide the ability to replace the initially chosen
controller with a controller from another vendor at a future date,
without having to touch the WTPs.  Since much of the installation cost
involves the installation of the WTPs as opposed to the controller,
controller replacements are much simpler and less expensive than WTP
rollouts.

In such a situation, it is in the interest of the IT administrator to
maintain the greatest flexibility with respect to the choice of
controllers. 
   If the WTPs only support one particular mode (WTP encryption versus
central encryption), then the administrator will only be able to choose
a controller supporting the particular mode handled by the WTPs that
have been installed.

As a result, I believe it is quite important from the IT administrator
perspective that the WTPs support multiple modes, but it is less
important that controllers support multiple modes.

In making a decision on the modes to be supported, the CAPWAP WG needs
to think through the requirements for the WTPs and the controllers
separately.  
While it might be ok to only mandate that controllers support WTP
encryption, requiring that WTPs support one mode will remove much of the
value that CAPWAP was supposed to provide to IT administrators.


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