28 CHAPTER 2: PLANNING AND MANAGING YOUR WIRELESS NETWORK WITH 3WXM
Which Services To Provide?
What is a service?: A service is a concept (not a selectable item in the 3WXM
interface) that represents a set of options you configure and deploy on your
wireless network. You configure services to support the different levels of
network access you need to provide. For example, a service configured to
support employee access will have different options configured to provide
greater access to the network. In contrast, a service configured for guest
access typically restricts users to limited or no internal network access, but
easily provides a gateway connection to the Internet.
A service can be fully isolated and independent of other services on the
network (multi-hosted access is typically isolated), or you can reuse part
of a service configuration for another service you want to provide. Each
service has potential authentications (802.1X, web page, MAC address,
or “last resort”) and potential encryptions (802.11i, WPA, WEP, or
unencrypted).
Purpose of this section: To provide information about services that you can
configure using 3WXM.
Why is this important?: Understanding the services you can configure with
3WXM is the first step in planning and configuring your network.
The first step you need to do when planning your wireless network is to
determine which services your organization requires. The three common
types of services are:
Employee access
Guest access
Voice over Wireless IP (VoWIP)
Employee access is typically secure, encrypted access to the wireless
network. Guest access is access (possibly unencrypted) for visitors at your
location. If you intend to resell services to other providers, you will need
to provide multi-hosted access.
Determining the services you will need at the beginning of the planning
process results in configuration data. The configuration data is used to
create service profiles and AAA rules for each service. A service profile is a
subset of a radio profile. A radio profile is a common set of configuration
parameters that can be applied to many MAP radios.
See “Create a Service Profile” on page 97 for information about
configuring services.