SonicPoint FairNet Overview

IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN is a half-duplex broadcast system, in which all wireless clients compete for the shared bandwidth. Ideally, wireless networks should provide fairness in bandwidth distribution to create a better user experience and maintain productivity and flexibility for all wireless traffic.

With 802.11n technology, wireless LAN throughput can reach up to 300 Mbps to meet the high demand of performance and diversified timing sensitive services. However in 802.11n wireless LAN networks wireless users still confront bandwidth issues when multiple users are coexisting. For example because all bandwidth is shared by all associated wireless clients, some “bandwidth hog” (such as a VoIP or P2P user) might use most of the bandwidth and cause delays or network interruptions for low-bandwidth, HTTP users.

Given this fact, SonicPoint FairNet feature is designed to provide an easy-to-use method for network administrators to control the bandwidth of associated wireless clients and make sure the fairness among everyone of them.

Administrator can configure SonicPoint FairNet bandwidth limits for all wireless users, for specific IP address ranges, or for individual clients to provide fairness as well as network efficiency.

SonicPoint Fairnet is available for appliances running SonicOS 5.6 and higher.