Cisco WLAN design

      With most WLAN designs, security is the first capability folks worry about. Fortunately, WLAN technology contains robust security features with viable authentication and encryption mechanisms. A security solution can be designed in a variety of ways, however. This tip provides some best practices for designing effective security architectures.

       We will cover specific design aspects of the Cisco WLAN solution utilizing controller-based architectures. These design best practices have been developed over the course of multiple design initiatives with the Cisco solution and primarily from lessons learned from deploying the Cisco solution. Most of the information is related to the Cisco solution, but some of the lessons learned and best practices relate to the process behind deploying the designs.

User considerations
       In most organizations, the user community dictates the security architecture. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach. The recommended approach is to identify the user communities that will utilize the WLAN system and design the security accordingly.

As a foundation, the following user communities are a good place to start:

• Employees/visiting employees -- require access to corporate applications and need those applications to be secure
• Contractors -- on site temporarily, but for an extended period of time; require access to some corporate applications (other than just Internet)
• Guests -- need access to Internet only