Concept Guide

Dell Networking W-Series Instant 6.4.3.1-4.2.0.0 | User Guide Services | 276
Chapter 20
Services
This chapter provides information on how to configure following services on a W-IAP:
l AirGroup
l Real Time Location Server (RTLS)
l Analytics and Location Engine (ALE)
l OpenDNS
l Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)
l Palo Alto Network Firewall
l XML-API Server
AirGroup Configuration
AirGroup provides a unique enterprise-class capability that leverages zero configuration networking to enable
AirGroup services from mobile devices in an efficient manner. Zero configuration networking enables service
discovery, address assignment, and name resolution for desktop computers, mobile devices, and network
services. It is designed for flat, single-subnet IP networks such as wireless networking at home. The users can
register their personal devices and define a group of users who can to share the registered devices.
Administrators can register and manage an organization's shared devices such as printers and grant global
access to each device, or restrict access according to the username, role, or user location.
In large universities and enterprise networks, it is common for devices to connect to the network across VLANs.
As a result, user devices on a specific VLAN cannot discover service that resides on another VLAN. As the
addresses used by the protocol are link-scope multicast addresses, each query or advertisement can only be
forwarded on its respective VLAN, but not across different VLANs. Broadcast and multicast traffic are usually
filtered out from a wireless LAN network to preserve the airtime and battery life. This inhibits the performance
of AirGroup services that rely on multicast traffic. Dell addresses this challenge with AirGroup technology.
The distributed AirGroup architecture allows each W-IAP to handle mDNS and DLNAqueries and responses
individually instead of overloading a Virtual Controller with these tasks. This results in a scalable AirGroup
solution.
The AirGroup solution supports both wired and wireless devices. An AirGroup device can be registered by an
administrator or a guest user.
1. The AirGroup administrator gives an end user the AirGroup operator role, which authorizes the user to
register the client devices on the CPPM platform.
2. W-IAPs maintain information for all AirGroup services.W-IAP queries CPPM to map each device’s access
privileges to the available services and responds to the query made by a device based on contextual data
such as user role, username, and location.