What is a Wireless-aware LAN?

 
A wireless-aware LAN is Cisco’s new approach to designing and implementing
WLANs into an existing Cisco LAN infrastructure.This approach is an attempt to
address and eliminate the issues that network engineers and management face in
the implementation of a WLAN. Some of these issues were discussed earlier in this
chapter, such as the lack of centralized management, security issues, and the difficulty
of deploying a WLAN within an existing infrastructure. Cisco has minimized
this effort by combining an existing Cisco switch and router infrastructure with
Cisco wireless infrastructure to make an integrated wireless-aware LAN.
Cisco brings the WLAN and wired LAN together by using a combination of
their switches, routers,APs, compatible client adapters, and LAN management software.
This allows you to build on an existing Cisco hardware-based infrastructure
and easily add wireless networking support to your design. In a wireless-aware
LAN, all of these network infrastructure components work together seamlessly to
provide both wired and wireless services to users of the LAN with minimal additional
workload for the network engineers who administer the LAN.
The Cisco wireless-aware LAN infrastructure is comprised of the following
eight components:
 Cisco IOS Software
 Cisco Aironet Series WLAN APs
 Cisco Aironet Series WLAN Client Adapters
 Cisco Compatible Client Adapters
 Cisco Works WLAN Solution Engine 2.x (WLSE)  Cisco Wireless Security Suite
 Cisco Secure Access Control Server 3.2 (ACS)
 Cisco Wireless-Aware LAN Switching and Router Products
Each of these work together to make s WLAN a simple extension of preexisting
wired LAN.The following sections discuss some of the benefits of this
approach and some special design considerations to keep in mind when implementing
a Cisco wireless-aware LAN.