Wireless LANs

Sigma has extensive experience in providing both centralised and distributed solutions.

Cisco centralised solution

The Cisco centralised solution has many benefits, not least that choosing CISCO equipment removes the uncertainty of investing in 'start-up' technologies or companies that may not be around to support you in the long run. Choosing Cisco means you are choosing proven technology from the leading manufacturer. Other benefits include:

Ease of Deployment and Use:

Allows IT staff to rapidly deploy enterprise-wide Wireless LAN services with minimal incremental staff or extensive RF training. Once running, the system is easier to manage, configure, and control from one central location.

Robust WLAN Capabilities

Provides a complete system for service, security, wireless prevention and protection, mobility and real-time applications.

Cost-Efficiency

Reduces the capital requirements for WLAN deployment and tackles the key financial challenges of operating a Wireless LAN.

Support for Real-Time Applications

Allows IT staff to control key WLAN attributes, such as QOS and location and user identity to support all voice, video and data applications.

Flexibility

Capabilities are available across a wide range of products, from small 6 port applicances to high-capacity WLAN Blades supporting up to 300 access points. The centralised solution can be deployed in the wiring closet, the distribution layer or the data centre, across Layer 2 and Layer 3 connections. This makes it an ideal fit for any enterprise environment.

Enables location Tracking

Identifies and tracks wireless clients as they roam throughout a wireless network. This location-tracking feature is tightly coupled with other capabilities that enable; accurate RF planning, tighter WLAN security, real-time capacity management and support for new wireless applications, such as voice.

Track record

Sigma Technologies Group Our expertise in the Cisco centralised solution date back a number of years as the first and largest Airespace partner in Europe. We have been working with CISCO since 2003, when we deployed the first centralised solution in the UK at the University of East Anglia. All of which means that Sigma is uniquely positioned to recommend and consult on best of breed WiFi solutions and applications using Cisco Centralised Solutions as the benchmark.

Distributed solutions

Sigma offers two different distributed wireless network solutions, an Aerohive WLAN or a Cisco Outdoor Wireless Mesh.

Aerohive WLAN

A WLAN Solution based on the Aerohive Cooperative Control Wireless LAN Infrastructure is a cost-effective, secure wireless network that has the performance, reliability, and scalability to support future needs.

Lower Cost - No Controller Cost or Complexity

Aerohive Networks controller-less cooperative control architecture provides for a more cost-effective wireless LAN solution able to perform all the functionality of a controller-based solution, but without the costs associated with implementing and running controllers.

Simpler to Deploy and Expand

Aerohive's approach to wireless LANs is simple to deploy and expand because it's not constrained by controller capacity limits or wireless overlay planning. There is no need to upgrade to a higher capacity controller just because you need to add one more Access Point (AP) or want to migrate to IEEE 802.11n for higher performance. And because traffic is not routed to a centralised wireless LAN controller, traffic bottlenecks are reduced.

APs are organised into 'Hives' and configuration, monitoring and reporting is provided by a central network management system called the Hive Manager. This management appliance can be located anywhere within the network and is not essential to the network's ongoing operation.

Flexible Identity-based Policy Enforcement at the Edge

Cooperative control architecture allows Hive APs to enforce powerful and flexible identity-based security, access control and quality-of-service (QoS) policies at the edge of the network. This also allows traffic to be controlled as soon as it enters the network, rather than after the traffic has traversed multiple hops to reach a central controller.

High Availability & Mesh Redundancy

Aerohive Networks cooperative control architecture can achieve new levels of availability and resiliency in mission-critical wireless LAN networks. Unlike controller-based solutions where there is a single point of failure, HiveAPs work together to recover from component failures without the need to deploy redundant systems. Inherent high availability, low latency, and excellent Quality of Service (QoS) make the hive network ideal for applications such as Voice over Wireless LAN.

Distributed control and forwarding

Centralised controllers can be many times more costly than the APs they control. Thanks to the distributed nature of Aerohive Networks cooperative control architecture, the need to push controllers closer to the edge to achieve improvements is eliminated, thus significantly reducing the cost of a wireless network.

Linear cost structure and scalability

The linear cost model of the cooperative control architecture is able to ensure consistent and predictable costs when expanding coverage or adding capacity.

Security & Compliance

Sophisticated security capabilities in every HiveAP and, of course, in the Aerohive Networks cooperative control architecture itself, ensure that the network is extremely robust.

No overlay network to manage

Because there is no need for an opaque overlay network back to a wireless network controller, existing network architecture, monitoring, QoS, and security systems can stay in place and continue to function in the same way that they had prior to the introduction of the wireless network.

Cisco Outdoor Wireless Mesh

Cost-Effective and Secure Outdoor Wireless Mesh

Cisco outdoor wireless mesh network solutions enable deployment of wireless mesh network infrastructure, wireless bridging, and mobile networks, which can be integrated with existing networks. This allows government, public safety, and transportation organisations to build cost-effective outdoor wireless networks for private or public use.

Flexible, mobile, and dynamic communication

Wireless mesh technology enables organisations to deploy secure, high-bandwidth, scalable access to fixed and mobile applications across metropolitan areas, extending existing wired networked services and applications beyond current physical infrastructure.

Allows deployment where running fibre is cost-prohibitive

The Cisco Wireless Mesh Network is a single, integrated, secure, and high-speed network which enables government agencies to rapidly deploy new applications such as video surveillance, traffic management and other IP-based applications. The mesh network is ideally suited for metropolitan networks, because it is easy to install on buildings and streetlight posts and is designed to scale to large outdoor deployments.

Simplifies expansion of the network

The Cisco Wireless Mesh Networking Solution is composed of products from the Cisco Unified Wireless Network architecture. It includes Cisco Aironet 1500 Series lightweight outdoor mesh access points that can be deployed with zero-touch configuration.

Reduces maintenance

Intelligent wireless routing, based on the Adaptive Wireless Path Protocol (AWPP) creates a wireless mesh infrastructure that dynamically optimises the network routes and self-heals from interference or outages, while the Radio Resource Management (RRM) software allows mesh access points to monitor their environments and adjust channels and frequencies in real time to avoid interference from other wireless devices. These automated capabilities help reduce deployment and maintenance costs.

Simple to manage

The Cisco Aironet 1500 Series is connected to Cisco wireless LAN controllers and is managed by the Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS). The wireless LAN controller is responsible for system-wide wireless LAN functions such as security policies, intrusion prevention, RF management, quality of service (QoS), and mobility. Cisco WCS centralises wireless LAN systems management of RF prediction, policy provisioning, network optimization, troubleshooting, user tracking, and security monitoring.

Superior security across the entire network

A properly designed and configured wireless network provides the necessary safeguards for data security and in-band radio interference. This is important for mobile users that require secure remote access over wireless LANs to connect back to their private data networks.

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