Juniper / Trapeze Networks

Juniper recently completed its acquisition of Trapeze Networks. Trapeze was a technology leader in managed wireless networking, and now has a hugely successful networking giant behind it.

Trapeze Networks offers several unique features that competitors don't have at all or not nearly as well developed. These include:

Smart Mobile - Their access points make much of the Layer 2/Layer 3 traffic decisions locally, not requiring traffic to flow to the WLAN controller. This provides for lower latency and jitter by lowering the number of hops on the network, especially important for audio (VoIP) and video. It also allows for much better scalability. Want to upgrade to 802.11n? Other vendors controllers and switches that have to touch all wireless traffic cannot handle that huge jump in load and require massive upgrades or replacement. The Trapeze design allows for better placement and utilization of valuable controllers. In many cases you can save the expense of employing a local WLAN controller in a remote office or more affordably provide redundancy.

Faster, More Reliable Roaming with Full Security - Only Trapeze has a distributed security/authentication model. There is no dependence on a “home controller” like for other vendors. Once a client is authenticated, the security keys are propagated to all other controllers in a Mobility Domain, such that whenever a client roams to a new controller, the new controller is already aware of the client and already has the required security keys, without needing to query the network. The result is faster, more reliable roaming, indoor and outdoor.

Inevitably, because of the complexity of roaming across WLAN controllers, vendors that rely on a “home controller” encourage deploying large controllers, each supporting as many access points as possible. This reduces the incidence of cross-controller roams, but at the expense of inefficient traffic flows, increased congestion and higher exposure to single point of failure.

Highest Availability, Nonstop Infrastructure - As wireless LANs become the new access-layer to the corporate network, mission-critical availability becomes paramount. While many vendors have implemented component-level reliability features such as dual homing from the access point, link aggregation or redundant power and so on (all standard on Trapeze), none other than Trapeze, have tackled system-level resilience to match that of the most advanced wired networks. In most networks it is typical to implement a many-to-one redundancy configuration. However, one of the major drawbacks of this approach is that it is difficult to keep the backup controller configuration in step with the controllers it is intended to back up. Furthermore, since few IT departments have the discipline or the time, to regularly test their disaster recovery plan, the backup controllers rarely get tested, and lay idle 99% of their life – until when they are needed, it is often discovered they are not properly configured!

Trapeze solves this problem with “Cluster Configuration” by enabling a many-to-many redundancy capability, in which all controllers act as backups for one another and at all times carry a copy of the configuration of all other controllers. With this “active redundancy” approach, all controllers are in operation at all times, and in the event of any one of them failing, the others can instantaneously assume management responsibility for all the Access Points previously managed by the failed controller, without any calls being dropped or data sessions being broken. This feature also enables in-service upgrades with absolutely zero downtime. As one controller is brought off-line, the others dynamically and immediately absorb the extra load. After the controller is upgraded or reconfigured, it automatically resumes operation and takes back the load from the other controllers in the cluster.

Toll-Quality, Most Reliable Voice - Thanks to Smart Mobile local switching, voice traffic flows directly from handset to handset, taking the shortest path, without needing to go through intermediate WLAN controllers. Consequently Trapeze WLANs have the lowest end-to-end latency for voice calls. Independent tests show that under high loads, other vendors have up to 6 times the latency and 15 times the jitter of Trapeze for voice traffic. Going beyond superior voice quality, the combination of Trapeze’s distributed Mobility Domain and “clustered switching” capabilities provides a level of network resiliency that is unprecedented in the industry. Trapeze’s “clustered switching” enables hit-less failover of voice calls if an access point or a controller, or even a portion of the wired network fails while a call is in progress. Any other vendor would drop the call, but the Trapeze WLAN infrastructure can dynamically re-route the call and keep it alive, without missing a beat.

Traffic Steering - Trapeze Networks provides the unique ability to steer 802.11a clients to the A radio, whereas they would normally first try and succeed in connecting with B/G. This takes load off the B/G radio, effectively increasing total throughput and capacity of an access point, saving equipment costs and providing a better user experience.

Load Balancing - Wireless clients tend to be sticky, meaning they'll tend to hang on to a given access point even when the've roamed to a better one. Trapeze's system will proactively and seamlessly connect the client to a more appropriate access point. Conversely, if an access point has a heavy load some clients will be transparently shifted to a nearby access point. This gives everyone better performance. This and traffic steering are among features that help Trapeze achieve 30-40% more usable capacity than any other vendor with the exact same number of access points, with fewer controllers.

Same Deployment Model Indoor and Outdoor - The requirements for outdoor access points and indoor access points are different. Only Trapeze has a uniform architecture, deployment model, RF planning and management system for both indoor and outdoor. Other vendors have a variety of constraints when deploying outdoor wireless networks, for example: all outdoor access points must be managed separately from indoor access points by a dedicated controller; wireless bridging requires a completely different management platform; all client traffic must be switched by a centralized controller, and may therefore need to traverse the mesh twice. These constraints waste money and resources.

Superior Intrusion Protection with Dynamic Threat Response - Trapeze offers intrusion protection that is second to none. Wireless LAN controllers generally provide support for detecting and preventing approximately 40 common intrusion methods or malicious attacks – this support comes almost for free, because it is included in the Wi-Fi chipset that almost every vendor is using. But only Trapeze has integrated advanced WIDS/WIPS

capabilities into its management platform. Trapeze Networks has partnered with IDS/IPS industry leader AirDefense to integrate the two company’s management platforms. AirDefense does not require special sensors, because it is designed to use Trapeze Access Points, as dedicated sensors. Thanks to this unique integration enterprises can implement the utmost protection against 250+ potential threat types, and save over 50% of the cost of sensors.

During normal operation a few Trapeze Access Points can be configured as strategically placed dedicated sensors, while the rest function as normal Access Points, providing network access for mobile users. But when an attack is detected, the other Access Points can be dynamically converted to sensors to help mitigate the attack, by launching counter attacks and collecting more forensic information. In addition, through management integration, all configuration changes on one system are replicated in the other – saving configuration time, and ensuring both systems are synchronized, likewise all alerts and alarms generated by one management platform also appear on the other management platform, so both security personnel and network IT staff are aware of an intrusion attempt the instant it occurs.

Industry’s Most Advanced RF Planning and WLAN Management - Unlike other vendors who added network management as an afterthought, Trapeze Networks set out to have the most sophisticated WLAN management capabilities from day one. Now in its 6th generation, RingMaster is a world class, award-winning management platform that dramatically simplifies the planning, configuration, deployment and monitoring of large enterprise wireless LANs. You can manage multi-site networks from a single management console with ease. Unlike other platforms, it treats 802.11n diferently than a/b/g, which of course it is.

YouTube Video, RF Planning

YouTube Video, RF Planning - CEO in the Bathroom!

Trapeze networks is the only wireless LAN vendor with 3D predictive modeling software that lets you perform accurate RF planning without the delay and expense of manual site surveys. Using existing blueprints of your building, and taking a few RF attenuation readings for common building properties to calibrate the model, RingMaster planning lets you model the optimum placement, channel assignments and radio power settings of Access Points to achieve best performance and mobility throughout your facility - both indoors and outdoors. What’s more, this is all done in a 3 dimensional space, taking account of channel assignments on adjacent floors, so you eliminate co-channel interference problems that reduce performance and prevent seamless roaming. You can define the coverage area you want, and specify capacity requirements in terms of active users, minimum bandwidth requirements, number of concurrent voice calls and so on, that you expect to support…and RingMaster does the rest, giving you a complete work order showing precisely where to place access points and how they should be configured for optimum results – A technician can literally use the work order as the instructions for physically installing all the Access Points.

Location Based Services - Trapeze offers the most sophisticated location-based appliance for tracking assets in your facility. Valuable equipment with RFID tags can quickly be located, far faster than competing products. Temperature monitoring is also standard. Alarms can be sent when an asset moves from a given area, when its tag is torn off, or when temperature thresholds are exceeded..

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