Information Systems:Exploring a wireless (WLAN) redesign

Overview

The wireless infrastructure currently has many limitations and is slated for a complete overhaul in Q2 2016. This page is dedicated to the planning of this project.

Planning Notes

Wireless hardware/vendor considerations

Zebra AP-7532

• Wireless 802.11ac, 3x3 dual radio.
• WiNG 5.8 controller OS
• One AP serves as the

Former considerations

• 3 x Ruckus Wireless R710 access points
  • http://ca.insight.com/en_CA/search.html?qtype=all&q=ruckus
  • 1 x ZoneDirector 1200
  • Deemed too expensive and wireless clients wouldn't be able to take advantage of the advanced features of the AP (802.11k, 4x4 AC wave 2 etc.)

Proposed wireless configuration changes

Currently, the Psion wireless access points (the RF infrastructure) employ WPA2-Enterprise authentication: AES encryption and EAP authentication. While on paper this may seem "proper", EAP authentication is overkill. First of all, the authentication type is 802.1x and avails of the internal RADIUS functionality of the access point. Therefore, we're using an advanced authentication mechanism designed to work with large-userbase, centralized auth servers, but we're using a single, generic username/password pair ("gunuser2") to authenticate all devices and the RADIUS capabilities of an ARM CPU-powered access point. Moreover, EAP authentication in a roaming setting is ideal with one of the key-caching/fast-roam mechanisms developed. Recently, it has been discovered that the caching mechanism configured on the RF guns isn't even compatible