The thin / thick access-switch debate (with respect to wireless LAN in the enterprise)

Introduction:

As per Symbol (www.symbol.com) there is a new and better way to implement a wireless local area network (WLAN) in the enterprise — the Wireless Switch with overlay architecture. This approach involves overlaying a centrally controlled and managed wireless LAN switch and "thin" access ports onto an Ethernet foundation. Compared to the traditional "thick" access point wireless network, Symbol's "thin" approach delivers greater scalability, manageability, accessibility, reliability, and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

Arguments .... "for" :

(source: http://www.symbol.com) Thought Leadership / Advice: Many enterprises have installed wireless LANs using the traditional access point-based architecture with add-on products to provide additional management and security features. This approach does not deliver a complete, integrated solution for managing and securing a wireless LAN — nor does it provide switching functionality to integrate the wired and wireless network.

Although a traditional wireless network with "thick" access points may look like a switched-wireless network with "thin" access points on paper, the functionality is not the same. "Thick" access points are still "smart" entities that require configuration, management and support. In addition, the few additional services that these devices provide adds significant time and labor costs because of the installation, configuration and administration that they require.

However, the innovative overlay architecture of the Symbol Wireless Switch provides more functionality along with a variety of management and switching features — all without additional cost or network overhead. As the central point of aggregation for access ports on the network, the Wireless Switch enables network administrators to effectively manage and secure a WLAN while lowering the total cost of ownership.

Arguments .... "against" :

All thick access devices can be configured through a web-interface. It takes a day or two to write code, which can configure multiple devices from different vendors (maybe take 2-3 different varieties) , through a single interface. Buying softwares from multiple third parties is usually cheaper, rather than getting dependent on a single vendor. Add to this the cost of proprietary hardware (Symbol's thin access ports), cost of maintenance (expensive spares etc) and your TCO actually shoots up. The trend anyways seems to be in favour of distributed intelligence, and p2p networks.. and of late Skype enabled wifi access-points!