Wireless LANs (WLANs) are growing in popularity because of the great convenience offered in terms of providing mobility and flexibility. Existing Ethernet-based LANs can be easily extended to support WLAN, using the services of WLAN Access Points, since applications can continue to work without being affected by these changes.

Aricent WLAN Access Point (Aricent WLAN-AP) is a comprehensive software solution offered as a reference design for equipment manufacturers to immediately address the growing market.

This solution is aimed at providing a very high time to market advantage for OEMS to develop their WLAN SOHO Gateway devices, as it offers an integrated software package required for the same.

Figure 1. Bridged WLAN Network Topology

The Aricent WLAN-AP solution supports the following features:

Wireless LAN Provides support for 802.11 based WLAN interface. Makes use of AP firmware support at chipset level. Can be easily integrated with 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g based firmware. Easy Integration with several industry standard WLAN chipsets. Makes use of the WEP facility provided in the Hardware. WAN Supports PPP and PPPoE for WAN interface. Provides authentication using PAP & CHAP. LAN Supports Ethernet interfaces. Supports Bridging between wired and wireless interfaces. IP Supports Internet Protocol (IP). Supports Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). Supports Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP). Supports User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Supports Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).		Firewall Provides support for DMZ and filtering based on access lists. Supports filtering based on IP options, protocol and IP address. Prevents DOS attacks like SYN Flood, Ping of death, Win Nuke Attack, Snork Attack, Ascend Attack, TCP/UDP short header, Source routing attack, IP spoofing, Tiny Fragment attack, etc. Supports stateful inspection of packets. DHCP Supports Dynamic IP Address allocation for in-house/home office using DHCP Server. Supports Static IP address allocation. Supports the global, subnet specific and host specific option. DHCP Client for address allocation of WAN interface. Configuration Provides configuration through Console and Web. Supports Web Wizards for easy configuration and setup. Provides easy customization of Wizards. Supports configuration save and restore from FLASH. Provides support for configuration backup using TFTP. CLI for easy configuration. Supports configuration download from remote via TFTP.
NAT Supports sharing of the IP address account using NAT. Provides support for Port translation (NAPT). Supports both static and dynamic NAT. Provides Virtual Server support. Provides support for two-way NAT. A wide variety of ALGs are supported including H.323, CuSeeMe, DNS, FTP, PPTP, ICMP, NETBIOS, IP Multicast, ICQ etc.

Other Features

Aricent WLAN-AP provides a higher level of flexibility and extensibility compared to the solutions offered by other vendors. In addition, Aricent WLAN-AP can be extended and supported with additional software services for custom development, with modules available either from Aricent or third parties.

Figure.2.Stack Architecture