It's time for change in the world of wireless local area networks (WLANs), and it couldn't come at a better time.
In the past three years, there has been an explosion in consumer-level wireless devices. You've probably seen it in your workplace, with workers trying to get their smartphones and tablets to talk to your network. They've discovered the benefits of mobile networking and are trying to use it to improve their own productivity.
Unfortunately, traditional WLAN has been having a hard time keeping up with the demand. Companies have been having to add more and more access points, which is a costly proposition, and have been forced to deploy increasingly-complex ways of managing them.
Short on Time? Dowload our free guide "vWlan vs. WLAN: Benefits Explained" to read at a later time
Thankfully, there's a new option: The ADTRAN Bluesocket vWLAN system.
The Benefits of Bluesocket (v)WLAN
The ADTRAN Bluesocket Virtual Wireless LAN takes traditional WLANs to the next level, by moving management and traffic control onto a virtual machine, housed either on your own servers or at a remote location. This brings with it a wide range of improvements over the traditional WLAN setup:
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Lower equipment costs. Since the network is controlled by a single virtual machine, there's no need to invest in numerous costly standalone access points. This also translates into substantially lowered energy costs, up to an 80% reduction. This also brings with reductions in your CO2 emissions, which helps your "green" strategies and potentially nets you carbon credits.
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Far more users and access points. A traditional WLAN hardware controller can usually only handle around 150 access points and 4,000 users. A single Bluesocket virtual controller can have ten times as many access points, and nearly 50,000 users.
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Better security. A WLAN with fixed access points is an easy target for hackers attempting to intrude on your network, since they are granted preliminary access before any authentication occurs. A (v)WLAN can deny them entry at the access point itself, making unwanted intrusions significantly more difficult.
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Far better throughput. A traditional wireless controller can handle around 20-30 Gigabytes per second, limited by its own restricted throughput. A virtual controller can, again, increase this by a factor of ten by using the aggregate bandwidth of all the access points combined.
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Better traffic control. Typical wireless access points act as dumb routers, allowing one or two bandwidth hogs to degrade the experience for everyone else. Bluesocket virtual controllers integrate smart traffic management to balance the load across your access points, giving a smoother experience to all.
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Greater reliability. Hosting a virtual machine on multiple servers means there isn't a single point of failure that can cause your network to go down. Further, even if the actual servers have a hardware issue, virtual machines can be moved between physical equipment live, in real-time, without ever becoming inaccessible to users.
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Ease of management. One of the biggest issues with old-style WLANs is that every access
point had to be managed separately, making consistent standards implementation into a real headache. A vWLAN controller allows you to manage all of your networks through a single interface which, being Cloud-based, can be accessed from any Internet connection anywhere in the world. Read How to Prepare Your Network For Bluesocket Wireless Access Points for more information. -
Simple upgrades. If new wireless or virtual networking standards come along, all it will require is a software upgrade. You won't have to spend thousands of dollars on new equipment to maintain high technological standards.
The ADTRAN Bluesocket systems represent the next evolution in wireless networking. It reduces and minimizes the problems associated with having multiple hardware access points, and frees up your network to do what it's supposed to do: allow your workers better connections and inspiring greater productivity.
Still not convinced? Read How Bluesocket WiFi Improved Convention Center Connectivity to discover how one convention center greatly improved it's connection by utilizing Bluesocket.
If you're interested in finding out if Bluesocket is right for you, contact us for a consultation!
