H3C WX1800H Series Access Controller

All Inclusive AP License

The WX1804H series AC includes AP license as following by default, which protects customer’s investment to maximum, which also give SMB/SME a great opportunity to add new AP with the wireless network expansion without additional cost. The AP license support AP management, performance management, and RF management. The AP license allows AC to independently manage all H3C series of FIT APS including performance management, AP provision and RF management. All purchased licenses (AP licenses and public cloud licenses) are quoted for lifetime.

All-in-one Gateway

The WX1804H series AC integrates PoE, gateway and AC function in one box, which is perfect for SOHO, SMB and SME environment. WX1804H series AC supports full enterprise controller feature sets, in addition, WX1804H series AC supports gateway function, such as PPPOE, NAT, dynamic IP address, and static IP address setting function. It also support Bonjour Gateway, which helps enterprise to easily manage and control Apple devices, such as AirPrint printers, Apple TVs, iPad and more.

Embedded PoE+ Capability

The WX1804H series AC all LAN ports support 802.3af/802.3at PoE function, which saves TCO to customer’s existing environment and reduce the single points of failure at the same time. Single port can provide maximum 30w, providing power to connected devices, such as IP phones, wireless APs, and high power cameras.

802.11ax AP Management

In addition to 802.11a/b/g/ac/ac wave2 AP management, the WX1804H series AC can work together with H3C 802.11ax based APs to provide wireless access speed several times faster than a traditional 802.11a/b/g/ac/ac wave2 network. With 802.11ax large proximity which makes WLAN multimedia applications deployment a reality.

Brand New Operating System

WX1804H series AC is developed based on the latest H3C V7 platform. The new system sports significantly improvements in performance and reliability over the previous version, and is able to run the increasingly complicated network applications in the enterprise market. V7 features the following advantages:

Multi-core control: V7 can adjust the ratio of control cores to the forwarding cores in the CPU to make the most out of CPU computing power and strike the balance between control tasks and forwarding tasks, while providing strong concurrent computing power

User mode multi-tasking: V7 adopts a completely new software privilege level system, where most network applications are executed in user mode, and allow each application runs a different task. Each task has its own dedicated resource and when a task fault occurs which will be isolated at its own space avoiding interruption of other tasks. This makes system run more securely and reliably

User task monitoring: V7 comes with task monitoring feature, in which all tasks are monitored. When a user task goes wrong, system will reload and application will quickly recover

New independent application upgrade: V7 supports independent application upgrade, where a single application module is upgraded instead of the whole operating system. This greatly reduces the number of system reboots compared with the previous version, keeping the upgrade secure and sustaining the network stability

Flexible Forwarding Modes

In a wireless network of centralized forwarding mode, all wireless traffic is sent to an AC for processing which the forwarding capability of the AC may become a bottleneck. Especially on wireless networks where APs are deployed at branches, ACs are deployed at the headquarters, and APs and ACs are connected over a WAN. In this scenario, Distributed forwarding is more suitable. The WX1804H series AC supports both distributed forwarding modes and centralized forwarding mode and it can set SSID based forwarding as needed.

Carrier-Class Wireless User Access Control and Management

User-based access control is a key feature of WX1804H series AC. The WX1804H series AC comes with a user profile that serves as a configuration template to save predefined configurations. For different application scenarios, you can configure different items in a user profile, such as Committed Access Rate (CAR) and QoS policies

During authentication, an authentication server assigns a user profile to the device. If the user passes authentication, the device uses the configuration contents in the user profile to restrict the accessibility of resources of the user. When the user goes offline, the device disables the user profile. Thus, user profiles are applicable to online users rather than offline users and users that fail to pass authentication

The WX1804H series AC also supports MAC-based access control, which allows you to configure and modify the access rights of a user group or a particular user on an AAA server. The refined user rights control method enhances the availability of WLANs and facilitates access right assignment

MAC-based VLAN is another strong feature of the WX1804H series AC. The administrator can assign users (or MAC addresses) with the same attributes into the same VLAN and configure a VLAN-based security policy on the AC. This simplifies system configuration and refines user management to the per-user granularity

For security or accounting, the administrator may need to control the physical positions of wireless clients. The WX1804H series can satisfy this requirement. During authentication, the AC gets a list of permitted APs from the authentication server and then selects an AP for the requesting wireless client. In this way, the wireless client can only associate with that AP and thus its position is controlled

Smart Roaming Features

Supports intra-AC roaming, cross-AC roaming, and cross-VLAN Layer 3 roaming

Portal roaming information synchronization function: AC and AP support Portal users' non-perceived roaming between ACs on a large-scale network, without the Portal mac-trigger server. The wireless controller can independently assume the mac-trigger server function. This reduces the pressure on the portal server and prevents the portal server from becoming a performance bottleneck. When the Portal server is done, the online terminal can still roam without authentication between no less than 10 wireless controllers.

802.1X roaming information synchronization function: AC and AP support 802.1X users for fast roaming between ACs on a large-scale network. Support dot1x authentication for fast roaming between ACs. Terminals do not need to do authentication again after roaming to a new AC. Alleviate server pressure and ensure fast access of terminals, and support fast roaming between more than 10 ACs.

Support 802.11k/v/r fast roaming protocols

Hierarchical AC Architecture

Hierarchical AC architecture is the brand new network configuration engineered by H3C to cater for the need of multi-layer network construction in the market. Hierarchical AC employs the centralized management hierarchy similar to the large enterprise, where one core layer management AC associates with multiple local access layer ACs, and access layer ACs directly connects with underlying APs. Access layer ACs’ mainly serve real-time applications such as AP access and data forwarding, while core layer ACs’ mainly focus on non-realtime tasks such as management control and centralized authentication, and still retain the functions of connecting APs and forwarding data that typical ACs have. Core layer ACs are high performance ACs and are deployed in the convergence layer; access layer ACs can be comprised of standard ACs, all-in-one ACs (with router and DPI features), or wired and wireless ACs, and are deployed in parallel with existing network. Hierarchical AC network construction model puts wired and wireless integration to the next level, and is applicable to large scale wireless network construction. Hierarchical AC model maps naturally to the head quarter and branch deployment scenario, where core link bandwidth and core AC forwarding power no longer become a bottleneck. Core layer AC centralized control, access layer AC and lower level APs can be conveniently upgraded and synchronized automatically, and greatly simplifies version upgrade tasks. Access layer AC will be responsible for AP switching and significantly improves roaming performance.

Intelligent Channel Switching

In a WLAN, adjacent wireless APs should work in different channels to avoid channel interference. However, channels are very rare resources for a WLAN. There are a small number of non-overlapping channels for APs. For example, there are only three non-overlapping channels for the 2.4GHz network. Therefore, the key to wireless applications is how to allocate channels for APs intelligently

Meanwhile, there are many possible interference sources that can affect the normal operation of APs in a WLAN, such as rogue APs, radars and microwave ovens. The intelligent channel switching technique can ensure the allocation of an optimal channel to each AP, thereby minimizing adjacent channel interference. Besides, the real-time interference detection function can help keep APs away from interference sources such as radars and microwave ovens

Intelligent AP Load Sharing

According to IEEE 802.11, wireless clients control wireless roaming in WLANs. Usually, a wireless client chooses an AP based on the Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI). Therefore, many clients may choose the same AP with a high RSSI. As these clients share the same wireless medium, the throughput of each client is reduced greatly.

The intelligent AP load sharing function can analyze the locations of wireless clients in real time, dynamically determine which APs at the current location can share load with one another, and implement load sharing among these APs. In addition to load sharing based on the number of online sessions, the system also supports load sharing based on the traffic of online wireless users

Support SSID automatic hiding function based on radio resource utilization. When the radio resource reaches or exceeds the configured threshold, the SSID automatically hides to provide users with stable and reliable wireless services.

Layer 4-7 Deep packet inspection

The WX1804H series AC can identify variety of applications and policy control can be implemented including priority adjustment, scheduling, blocking, and rate limiting to ensure efficient bandwidth resource and improve the network quality.

Layer 7 Wireless Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (WIDS / WIPS)

The WX1804H series AC supports the blacklist, whitelist, rogue device defense, bad packet detection, illegal user removal, upgradeable Signature MAC layer attack detection (DoS attack, Flood attack or man-in-the-middle attack) and counter measures

With the built-in knowledge base in WX1804H, you can perform timely and accurate wireless security decisions. For determined attack sources such as rogue AP or terminals, you can perform visible physical location monitoring and switch physical port removing

With H3C firewall/IPS device, network infrastructure can also implement layer 7 security defense in wireless campus, covering wired (802.11) and wireless (802.3) secure connections on an end-to-end basis

RealTime Spectrum Guard

Real Time Spectrum Guard (RTSG) is the innovative H3C professional state-monitoring program for the wireless spectrum. All AC models support the internal RF data acquisition module of Sensor AP to achieve deeply integrated monitoring and real time spectrum protection.

It can achieve 24x7 wireless signal quality monitoring, trend assessment and unauthorized interference alert. Through active probe and 2.4GHz/5GHz RF interference source (WiFi or non-WiFi) in every band, it provides a graphic representation of real-time FFT plot of the spectral density plot, spectrum diagram, the duty cycle map, event spectrum diagram, channel gain and interference gain. It can also automatically identify the source of interference, determine the location of rogue wireless equipment and ensure that the wireless network is always in great shape.

Hardware Specifications

Software specifications