Product Overview
The Cisco® 2500 Series Wireless Controller enables systemwide wireless functions in small to medium-sized enterprises and branch offices. Designed for 802.11n and 802.11ac performance, Cisco 2500 Series Wireless Controllers are entry-level controllers that provide real-time communications between Cisco Aironet® access points to simplify the deployment and operation of wireless networks (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Cisco 2500 Series Wireless Controller
As a component of the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, this controller delivers centralized security policies, wireless intrusion prevention system (wIPS) capabilities, award-winning RF management, and quality of service (QoS) for voice and video. Delivering 802.11ac performance and scalability, the Cisco 2500 Series provides low total cost of ownership and flexibility to scale as network requirements grow.
The Cisco 2504 Wireless Controller supports Cisco Application Visibility and Control (AVC), the technology that includes Cisco’s Network-Based Application Recognition 2 (NBAR-2) engine. N-BAR-2 does deep packet inspection (DPI) to classify applications and tie into quality of service (QoS) to either drop or mark the traffic, thereby prioritizing business-critical applications in the network. Cisco AVC uses NetFlow Version 9 to export the flows to Cisco Prime™ Infrastructure or a third-party NetFlow Collector. The Cisco 2504 Wireless Controller also supports Bonjour Services Directory, which enables Bonjour (Apple) Services to be advertised and utilized in a separate Layer 3 network. Wireless Policy engine is a wireless profiler and policy feature on the Cisco 2500 Series Wireless Controller that enables profiling of wireless devices and enforcement of policies such as VLAN assignment, QoS, ACL, and time-of-day-based access.