D-Link pushes dual-band 802.11n for larger sites

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 12 January 2010 05:35

Your IT - Home IT

New products from D-Link aim to deliver the benefits of dual-band 802.11n wireless networking to larger sites in a way that makes life easier for network administrators.

802.11n Wi-Fi is fairly common in homes and small businesses, and a growing number of these installations take advantage of the standard's simultaneous dual-band capability.

D-Link wants to bring this capability to medium to large scale sites with its new DWL-8600AP wireless unified 802.11n simultaneous dual-band access points and DWS-4026 unified wired/wireless switching unit.

The DWL-8600AP can be used as a stand-alone unit, in a cluster of up to eight access points, or up to 256 of them can run under the control of a DWS-4026.

In addition to simultaneous dual-band, Multiple In Multiple Out (MIMO) support, the DWL-8600AP handles WPA/WPA2, MAC address filtering, load balancing (when used in clusters), QoS/WMM, rogue access point detection and WDS.

When used with a DWS-4026, the access points can carry out local forwarding (for performance) or direct all traffic to the switch (for security).

Features of the DWS-4026 include centralised management and policy enforcement for wireless mobility, fast roaming between access points, control of all access point parameters, load balancing, and self healing (if an access point fails, the power output of neighbouring access points is increased to compensate), rogue access point detection, and attack detection and mitigation.

Wired network features include 24 Power over Ethernet Gigabit ports, and provision for optional 10GbE connections.

According to D-Link officials, target markets for the system include medium to large businesses, government organisations, schools, hospitals, and larger hotspots such as those at convention halls, hotels and airports.

The DWL-8600AP access point costs $A999, and the DWS-4026 is $A11,095.