November 21, 2006, 11:29 AM — Listen to the column Thousands of wireless access points, or visit our Podcast Center to hear more by James Gaskin.
How well are you managing your wireless network? Do you know where all your access points are? Do you know how many clients are using those access points at this moment? Now multiply those questions by over 7,000 access points spread across 220 locations, and give me your answers.
That was the problem facing the Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools and their plan to provide wireless broadband network access for every classroom across their district. An ambitious and obviously well-funded district, Fairfax County needed immediate support for wireless problems. If a classroom has a problem, and tech support is an hour away, the class will be over before help can arrive. Thus the need for leading edge management.
Enter AirWave (.com), and their AirWave Management Platform and brand new Executive Portal management console. By supporting multiple layers of management, including geographic location and group options, AirWave makes it possible for Fairfax County to manage their thousands of Cisco wireless access points.
Essentially a Console of Consoles, the Executive Portal offers a variety of access controls. Technicians can directly change remote access points to troubleshoot problems. Another group has control over system users and security policies. A management group may watch traffic on the system and drill down to locations and even individual access points, but not be able to change anything.
Such restrictions are important in large installations where executives, or school administrators, want to see what they spent so much money on. So AirWave lets them essentially look at, but not touch, the network. The damage from blundering corporate vice presidents pales beside the chaos created by assistant principals (my statement, not AirWave's). Looking at graphs and colored charts (management eye candy) gives executives the positive feedback they need without letting them change the network.
While some of AirWave's customers have as many as 20,000 access points spread across 600 or more locations, most companies don't deploy that many wireless connections. When you do expand, however, remember that PoE (Power Over Ethernet) is your friend: running electrical power to all your access points will seriously batter your budget.
Most importantly, if you think your users are bad, imagine managing hundreds of middle school children. Then relax. Unless you're in Fairfax County, of course. Then use the remote management consoles from AirWave to stay as physically far away from the middle schools as possible.
