4ipnet Blog: All About Wireless Networking

Happy Chinese New Year! (It's the year of the horse by the way.) Today let's talk about proxy ARP and WPA2. PROXY ARP ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) is an essential protocol in networking (both wired and wireless) that resolves IP addresses to MAC addresses when data needs to be sent between two hosts. Whenever a host wishes to obtain the physical address (MAC) of another, it will broadcast an ARP request onto the network. On wireless networks this may sometimes be additional and unnecessary traffic that decreases overall network performance. 4ipnet access points address this issue by employing PROXY ARP to reduce the amount of ARP packets in the wireless medium, handling ARP requests itself instead of forwarding them onto the wireless medium when possible. As long as the AP’s own ARP table has a record of the address requested, it can respond on behalf of the actual host. As a result, the amount of ARP packets in the air diminishes and hosts learn MAC addresses mu...

The catalog presents you with the latest product information of 4ipnet! Our product portfolio includes wireless LAN controllers, indoor/outdoor access points, unified access switches and hotspot gateways, all enterprise-grade, of course. Check below (you can download the file as well): For more information, please contact  sales@4ipnet.com ##ShowAll##

Good day! We've received some positive feedback from you, our readers, and we're happy that you found the articles useful. Today we'll continue introducing you how Wi-Fi performance can be enhanced by 4ipnet APs. WMM (WI-FI MULTIMEDIA) If you’ve ever observed VoIP over Wi-Fi working flawlessly even when there were tons of other applications simultaneously using the network, then you’ve seen WMM (WI-FI MULTIMEDIA) in action. WMM provides fundamental QoS (Quality of Service) functionality to wireless networks by increasing the performance of differentiated wireless traffic, such as audio, video, and traditional application data. Based on the needs of each type of data, they are placed in one of four different queues, BE (Best Effort), BK (Background), VI (Video), and VO (Voice). Recall the earlier description of Wi-Fi medium access using CSMA/CA – clients must wait for a random amount of time before retrying transmission if a busy medium is detected. WMM assigns shorter ...

Hello everyone! We'll continuing introducing how 4ipnet APs can enhance Wi-Fi performance. Today's topic is Multicast to Unicast Conversion. In Wi-Fi networks, multicast packets are typically sent at slower rates to ensure that devices at the edge of an AP’s cell are able to receive the packets without error. This may be useful in environments where most clients are a certain distance (further away) from the AP. However, if the cell size is very small and most clients are densely packed around the AP, this would be an inefficient use of airtime. Why send at 11M when you can send at 300M? MULTICAST TO UNICAST CONVERSION is a method that 4ipnet APs employ to convert multicast transmissions to unicast so that they can be sent at unicast rates. When clients are close to an AP, high transmission rates can be more easily sustained, and thus unicast is more efficient. On the other hand, attempting to use the same rate with clients far away from the AP will lead to a high number of...

Sleek and compact, the EAP701 provides converged wired and wireless connectivity as well as unparalleled price performance. 4ipnet, a leading provider of competitive and comprehensive wireless LAN solutions for meeting the Wi-Fi demands of tomorrow, today announced the EAP701, a compact, fully-featured, and affordable enterprise-grade 802.11n access point. No effort was spared to ensure that despite the unassuming form factor, the EAP701 provides reliable, secure, and high-performance Wi-Fi with a complete centralized management suite. One of the major selling points of the EAP701 is its compact size and pearl-white inconspicuous design, making it ideal for décor-sensitive indoor environments such as hotel rooms or offices, and in selected countries, allows it to be installed directly into existing standard-sized outlet boxes. To further reduce installation costs and increase deployment flexibility, the EAP701 supports 802.3af PoE via either a standard RJ-45 port or an alter...

Hello people! After Airtime Fairness and band steering, this week we'll move on to optimal client filtering. Earlier in this feature guide we described Wi-Fi as a form of a wireless communication that utilizes CSMA/CA to avoid collisions during data transmission. As mentioned, one caveat of this protocol is that anyone who wishes to use the medium to transmit must wait until the medium is free (unused). Therefore, if a device or client takes a long time to transmit a small amount of data, overall network throughput is decreased. Now let us consider the case where a network consists of only 802.11n (or 802.11ac) clients. Theoretically, everyone can get in and out of the medium in a short amount of time, since under 802.11n/ac standards data can be transmitted at relatively fast rates. In this case, is network performance optimized? Legacy clients are not the only issue in a wireless environment – even though all clients may utilize the most up-to-date standard, some clients wil...

Happy New Year to everyone! Hope you all enjoyed the holidays! Now let us continue the series, giving you more concrete ideas about the features on 4ipnet APs. Last time we've covered Airtime Fairness; today we' ll talk about band steering. Band Steering In today’s wireless environment the unlicensed 2.4 GHz frequency band is becoming increasingly congested due to the explosion of mobile devices. As a result, many consumer device manufacturers, whether it be of laptop computers or smartphones, have incorporated 5 GHz-capable Wi-Fi chipsets in their devices. Furthermore, 802.11ac ready consumer devices are already making their way into the hands of everyday users. This begs the question: When a Wi-Fi environment offers connectivity in both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and clients have both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz capability, how do network operators balance the load Figure: Clients capable of 5 GHz are "steered" towards 5 GHz networks between the two frequency bands? One method i...