April 05, 2025

The difference between fat and thin wireless AP

Wireless AP, there are high-power AP, there is coverage AP, there are outdoor AP, and indoor AP, but have you ever heard of thin AP, fat AP, etc. What is the difference between them?

Compared to traditional autonomous access points (fat APs), the differences between the "wireless switch + thin AP" solution are obvious, mainly in the following areas:

The global unified management of fat APs exists only on their own, there is no global unified management, and there is no monitoring and management of wireless links and wireless users.

The management rights of the “Wireless Switch+Thin AP” solution are all centralized on the wireless switch/controller. Through the network management platform, the entire network equipment can be intuitively discovered, upgraded, and configured in batches, even including wireless. Link monitoring, management of wireless users

The global unified security AP has only a few security policies and can only exist on its own. For large-scale wireless networks, security policies are frequently configured and delivered in batches. The current status of fat APs cannot support the overall situation. Unified security;

All the users of the "Wireless Switch + Thin AP" solution and the security policy of the thin AP are all present on the wireless switch/controller, and the deployment of security policies is very easy;

Global unified authentication The authentication of a fat AP can only be deployed on the AP itself. The authentication policy cannot be updated frequently. At the same time, it can only authenticate, and other authentication-based policies cannot be deployed.

The certification body of the "Wireless Switch + Thin AP" solution is a wireless switch/controller. With the Radius system in the background, it can flexibly define, deploy, and change authentication policies.

The security of the device itself Fat AP has its own configuration. Once stolen, it is easy to log in through the serial port or network port to obtain the information of wireless network intrusion. It is a huge hidden danger of large-scale deployment of wireless networks.

The thin AP product of "Wireless Switch + Thin AP" solution does not save the configuration itself, ie "zero configuration product". All the configurations exist on the wireless switch/controller. Therefore, logically speaking, wireless users access thin APs. In fact, it is accessing the wireless switch/controller. Therefore, even if a thin AP deployed on the user's site is stolen, illegal users cannot get any configuration and eliminate the possibility of intrusion.

All roaming fat APs in the entire network must have all the management and configuration on them. The IP addresses of the connected users must also belong to the port VLANs and network segment address plans of the Ethernet switches directly connected to the fat APs. If the fat APs are deployed on a large scale, they will be disrupted. The IP planning and VLAN planning of the original wired network, and when wireless users cross fat APs, once they enter different network segments, it will inevitably involve the process of IP address re-request and re-authentication, and network access will inevitably be interrupted, so fat APs Products do not support cross-network segment roaming;

In the wireless switch + thin AP solution, the wireless user's IP address, authentication, and encryption all come from the wireless switch/controller, so regardless of the wireless user's location for any wireless network, which thin AP accesses, in fact, all Is to visit the same (or the same group) wireless switch / controller, but also to maintain its original connection information, IP address, authentication information, encryption information, so cross-network segment roaming will not be interrupted.

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