System Concept - LevelOne WHG-505 User Manual

2.3 System Concept

If you have experienced other LevelOne WLAN Controller products before and are familiar with its system concept,
you may skip the concept description below. Please proceed to the next section on (Hardware Description).
WHG-505 is capable of managing user authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA). The user account
information is stored in the local database or a specified external database server. Featured with user authentication
and integrated with external payment gateway, WHG-505 allows users to easily pay the fee and enjoy the Internet
service using credit cards through Authorize.net, PayPal, SecurePay or WorldPay.
With centralized AP management feature, the administrator does not need to worry about how to manage multiple
wireless access point devices.
Furthermore, WHG-505 introduces the concept of Service Zones - multiple virtual networks, each with its own
definable access control profiles. This is very useful for hotspot owners seeking to provide different customers or
staff with different levels of network services.
The following portion of this section explains the basic concepts of WHG-505; the same concepts also apply to the
other WLAN Controller products. With the understanding of these concepts, the administrator will be able to do more
advanced network planning and to manipulate the configurations of WHG-505 to suit his own specific application. It
is sufficient for most of administrators to use the default configuration with minor WAN/DNS address changes for
simple deployments.
Gateway is a network node where a small network attaches to a bigger network. WHG-505 is a kind of gateway in a
network environment; hence it has those features a typical gateway has, such as NAT, DHCP, DMZ, Firewall and etc.
Conventionally, the bigger network is referred as the gateway's WAN side or upstream network, while the small
network is referred as the gateway's LAN side. The Ethernet ports leading to the WAN side network is called WAN
ports. The Ethernet ports leading to the LAN side network is called LAN ports.
Local User is a type of user with its account credential stored in a database named "Local" within WHG-505. The
"Local" database of WHG-505 allows up to 6000 local user accounts. A local user account does not have an
expiration date once they are created. If administrator wishes to terminate the account, he must remove it. A local
database can be used as an external RADIUS database to another WLAN Controller product for account roaming.
On-demand User is a type of user with its account credential stored in a database named "On-demand" within
WHG-505. The "On-demand" database of WHG-505 allows up to 4000 on-demand account records. On-demand
User is used for short term usage purpose; it has an expiration period. An on-demand account record will be
recycled for creating new on-demand account if it has expired for over 15 days or has been deleted by the
Administrator/Manager manually.
External Authentication Database is a user account database that is not built inside WHG-505. Besides Local
database and On-demand database, WHG-505 allows up to three additional External Authentication databases
simultaneously. The types of external Authentication databases supported are RADIUS, POP3, LDAP (including
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