Supporting data rates up to 300Mbps per radio, 802.11n can result in 5-10 fold increases in traffic loads, compared with the 54 Mbps peak for 802.11a and 802.11g.  Current generation WLAN controllers that depend on solely centralized forwarding, do not have the capacity to handle this increase in load. Consequently, most WLAN vendors recommend customers buy expensive new controllers to support migration from 802.11a/b/g to 802.11n.

In stark contrast, Trapeze’s Smart Mobile architecture with intelligent switching easily scales to support the increased load without requiring fork-lift upgrades.

Combining centralized WLAN management with optimized traffic flow, Smart Mobile provides the highest performance WLANs today—802.11n-ready without costly upgrades. Smart Mobile’s intelligent switching is the first and only WLAN architecture that allows data to be forwarded centrally or in distributed fashion, depending on the underlying application. 

Smart Mobile scales with exceptional efficiency, because each access point adds more processing capability to the network. Through intelligent switching, Smart Mobile offloads an enormous amount of processing—including data forwarding, encryption, and policy enforcement—from the controller to the access points. By dramatically reducing the load on the controller, Smart Mobile has no problem with the increased performance of 802.11n.