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This document highlights the WLAN features and compares Firetide’s solution to its competitors. This is
strictly Firetide confidential and should not be distributed to customers.
Firetide is the leading provider of wireless infrastructure solution for broadband networks. Wireless
Access has always been a key component of Firetide’s wireless solution portfolio. Until now, the
intention of the access product line was primarily geared towards the customers who needed wireless
access in addition to the mesh based video surveillance. Having shown expertise in deploying high
performing mesh in more than 500 cities US‐wide, Firetide now brings Firetide has extended this
expertise in wireless into the indoor enterprise WLAN. Firetide is the OEM provider for Netgear’s
Enterprise WLAN solution thereby proving itself in the field. Multimedia optimization, feature richness,
aggressive pricing and unique indoor/outdoor WLAN portfolio are the cornerstone of Firetide’s WLAN.
Distributed
In the distributed architecture the controller does not exist. WLAN data path and control stack are
implemented on the APs. The APs are standalone. Here is how this plays out:
Pros
‐ Lower cost for smaller deployments.
‐ No single point of failure
Cons:
‐ Higher price points per AP
‐ layer 3 seamless mobility very difficult to implement and not scalable
‐ Difficult to manage for larger deployment
‐ Feature limitation. Vendors are forced to omit some WLAN control path features because APs
need to handle the feature along with the datapath and APs do not have enough processing
power
‐ Not scalable when it comes to mobility. Mobility involves coordination between APs. This work
load on each AP can increase exponentially as the network scales. This directly affects the
performance. In the centralized model, controller is a dedicated hardware meant for control
path features and mobility thus more scalable.
Centralized model
In this model, a central entity exists for implementing the WLAN control path and data path. This makes
installation, configuration as well as mobility handling easier
Pros:
‐ Centralized policy, data, network and user management
‐ L3 seamless mobility
‐ Highly scalable and hierarchical model
Cons:
‐ Higher price point for smaller deployments ( 5 or less APs) compared to standalone
‐ Controller can become a single point of failure
Firetide’s Hybrid approach
Firetide follows a hybrid approach when it comes to mobility. Most vendor such as Cisco and Aruba
implementation involves sending traffic to controller all the time. This puts the performance bottle neck
on the controller and thus reducing the throughput and also creating single points of failure. Firetide
WLAN solution will switch only the roaming traffic through the controller. Non‐roaming local traffic
directly exits the AP to the network.
Big advantage is that once the APs are up and running if the controller goes down, the clients will
continue to be associated to the APs and data will still go through. But in other vendors, controller down
would mean the WLAN network is down.
Firetide WLAN solution is highly flexible and adaptable to customer needs. Firetide has standalone AP
implementation and customers can convert from controller mode to standalone with a simple firmware
change. In general it is recommended to use controller for the WLAN. Standalone AP deployments are
more suited towards smaller deployment (less than 5 APs)
AeroHive – Standalone model – Well is it really ?
Aerohive positions itself as a standalone model for WLAN. There is no need for controller for
deployment. The APs implement the WLAN data path on the APs. However for implementing the WLAN
control path they have a management software called the HiveManager. As it is well known no WLAN
solution is complete without the control features, purchase of HiveManager becomes mandatory. So the
price advantage does not exist.
In addition Aerohive APs manage L3 mobility by co‐ordinating mobile clients amongst each other. This
approach is not scalable and will result in considerable performance load on the AP as the network size
increases.
WLAN Data Path
As with any networking technology, the WLAN has a data path and a control path. Data path comprises
of the modules involved in transporting a packet between the Ethernet and the wireless. As shown
below:
Application
TCP Traffic Management
IP Bridging / switching
To network
Access Points are implemented as a bridge module that switches traffic between radio and Ethernet.
The traffic management layer is the policing layer and regulates the flow of traffic.
Most of the Radio and the Ethernet layer implementation is specified by the IEEE 802 standards(802.11
for WLAN and 802.3 for Ethernet). Standardization of these layers means there is not much scope of
differentiation in terms of implementation. In fact most vendors use publicly available driver
modules(stacks) rather than reinventing the wheel. The majority of the differentiation comes in the
layers above Bridging/switching layer and the traffic management. The efficiency in the implementation
of the bridging module directly translates to the throughput, scalability and latency of the access points.
The traffic management module does traffic shaping, QoS to deliver better WiFi experience.
Firetide’s differentiators
Firetide’s datapath across all product lines has a common theme of being multimedia optimized. The
reason for that is the efficiency of the bridge module and the intelligence built in into the traffic
management modules.
Bridge module has been optimized for fast packet switching and minimize packet look up times. This
directly translates to high throughput and low latency which is ideal for video transmission.
Traffic management brings in intelligence to optionally prioritize video and voice over data. Three main
features are implemented to achieve this:
Application based QoS & Traffic shaping
This feature involves handling of video traffic over wireless differently than data. Video and voice by
nature are sensitive to jitter (inter packet delay variation). This inter‐packet delay variation results in
choppy video at the user level. Firetide’s traffic shaping module brings in paradigms from the ATM
technology into wireless. The flow of traffic going out from AP to the WiFi clients is controlled and
regulated to minimize inter packet delay variation and there by enabling superior video playback.
Multi‐rate optimization
The rate at which a radio transmits data packet is defined as the modulation rate. Higher the modulation
rate the higher the throughput. Wireless by nature being an unreliable medium, the rate of transmission
could vary from time to time. This is lethal to video playback as again this introduces jitter and thus
choppy video. The main reason for this variation in modulation rate is because of the Auto‐rate
algorithm. Most vendors implement an auto‐rate which strives to increase the modulation rate as and
when possible. If the packet is not able to get transmitted at higher rate, the rate is scaled down then it
goes up again for the next packet. Firetide unique multi‐rate optimization determines the best rate for a
given environment thus minimizing variations in the modulation rates and thus it brings in stability to
the video transmission.
Multicast reliability
By default, video transmission occurs as a multicast (IGMP). Since there is no concept of multicast in
wireless, the multicast is sent out as broadcast by the AP to the clients. Broadcast transmission is not
reliable in wireless so this results in packet losses and thus creating a bad video playback. Firetide brings
in the multicast to unicast transmission from its mesh platform to the AP. Every multicast packet that
hits the AP, AP will convert it to unicast and send it to each client. (Unicast packets are transmitted with
an acknowledgement on wireless thus making the video multicast reliable)
60
50
40
30 Modulation Rate
20 Firetide's rate
optimization
10
Firetide’s video optimization results in stability of rate thus better video playback
Competitive highlight‐ Many vendors including Cisco, Aruba and Ruckus implement the reliable
Multicast and they do have some level of QoS implemented on the APs. Firetide’s unique ability to do
multirate optimization and traffic shaping takes the traffic management to another level there by
delivery superior performance for video.
RF Management
Features implemented under RF management include auto channel allocation, power adjustment,
coverage gap detection and mitigation and Load Balancing.
Automatic Power allocation involves determining the power of each AP in other words the coverage
range. Too much power on an AP can result in interference on the neighboring APs. Periodic power
determination algorithms are run on the APs to determine the range of the APs.
Competitive highlight ‐ Almost every vendor will have an automatic channel allocation and power
control feature. So the differentiation lies in the actual performance of the feature. Firetide’s channel
and power allocation algorithms have been battle tested. WLAN solution brings in learnings from the
mesh platform in most rigorous indoor and outdoor environment.
Meru implements a unique scheme (similar to cell phones) called the cell model. Here all APs in a cell sit
on the same channel. Each AP then limits its coverage area. Practically there have been numerous
questions about performance when using a scheme like this. Since the throughput of the system comes
down when number of devices share the same channel.
Competitive highlight ‐ This feature is implemented nearly the same by all other vendors.
Load Balancing
Even though there might be multiple APs in an office how can one guarantee that clients will distribute
themselves across the APs available. Especially since enterprises are densely populated (in some cases
overpopulated) with APs, it so happens that some APs are heavily loaded with clients which others are
idle. To counter this practical problem, Firetide’s load balancing will “steer” clients to neighboring APs
there by minimizing the imbalance.
Competitive highlight – Aruba implements a similar scheme as Firetide in load balancing. Most other
vendors implement a connection admission control rather than load balance. In their scheme, the APs
simply don’t accept clients if they are overloaded. This has some detrimental effect on the clients. In
some cases, the clients would just abort WiFi connection and never try reconnecting.
Firetide also brings in a feature called location estimation and client blacklisting. WLAN controller is able
to determine the location of each client on a map based on the RF signature analysis instead of
triangulation. This results in much more accuracy than other vendors implementation. If client is
determined to be unauthorized administrator can blacklist and thereby preventing that client from
entering again into the network
Competitive highlight‐ Firetide’s RF signature analysis is a unique implementation. Cisco and Aruba also
implement several unique schemes in security. Aruba has several advanced rogue detection techniques
which makes their WLAN solution highly secure similar to Firetide’s. Cisco on the otherhand has
integrated its AP and routing/switches. So they are able to shut off the Ethernet port on the switch
where an AP is connected to if they determine that the AP is rogue.
Policy Management
Firetide WLAN solution brings in features like Radio Access policy and Rate limiting. Radio Access policies
such as access times for WLAN, usage policies etc can be configured on the entire WLAN or a subset of
the WLAN. Rate limiting policies can also be put in places to restrict bandwidth consumption on per user
or per SSID level. For instance companies want to restrict the amount of bandwidth available to guests
vs employees.
Competitive highlight: Most vendors provide this functionality. The uniqueness in Firetide’s
implementation involves in the ability to determine the capacity of the wireless network and then
dividing based on the rate limiting guidelines. This comes into picture when the RF environment is
heavily loaded. Most vendor solutions would not be able to maintain the Rate limiting policies but
Firetide’s capacity estimation and allocation algorithms would still be able to maintain the ratio of
bandwidth allocation between the users.
Appendix
Feature comparison matrix
Feature Cisco Meru Aruba Ruckus Firetide
Auto Channel Allocation x x x x x
Power Control x x x x x
Coverage Hole Detection/Auto Healing x x x x x
Heat map x x x x x
Scheduled channel re‐assignment x x x
Bandwith Policing (rate limit) (QoS) x x x x x
Existing LAN integration for security x x
Backhaul + Access x x x x
Location Based Service x x x
MAC ACL x x x x x
Rouge AP detection x X x x x
Guest access x x x x
L2/L3 Roaming x x x x x
Stacking redundancy x x x x
WDS functionality x x
Complete wireless portfolio
(Indoor/ruggedized outdoor, CPE and mesh) x
No licenses for AP scaling and features x
Multi‐rate optimization x
Multicast handling x x x x x
Beam forming antenna x
Standalone and Integrated(controller based
) APs x x
300,000
List Price (USD)
250,000
200,000
Ruckus
Cisco
150,000
Aruba
Meru
100,000
Juniper
Fire de
50,000
0
25 50 100 150
# of APs
HotPoint
WNDAP350 AP1252AG AP320 AP125 ZF7962 5000
Dual Radio $425 $1,299 $1,121 $795 $999 $ 695
Total Cost (assuming Dual APs)
$48,320
‐
50 AP $40,130 $84,950 $68,796 $67,616 $58,950 $39,749
$95,660
‐
100 AP $80,260 $164,900 $134,246 $121,260$114,900 $79,498
$135,250
‐
150 AP $120,390 $249,850 $196,496 $186,460$173,850 $119,247