Hardware Overview - Motorola RFS7000 Series System Reference Manual

Overview
The RFS7000 switch is a centralized management solution for wireless networking. It connects to non-legacy
access ports through L2 or L3 (L2 is preferable, if the situation allows it).
Access ports function as radio antennas for data traffic management and routing. System configuration and
intelligence for the wireless network resides with the switch. The switch uses access ports to bridge data to
and from wireless devices. The wireless switch applies appropriate policies to data packets before forwarding
them to their destination.
All data packets to and from wireless devices are processed by the switch, where appropriate policies are
applied before they are decapsulated and sent to their destination.
Access port configuration is managed by the switch through a Web UI Graphical User Interface (GUI), SNMP
or the switch Command Line Interface (CLI).

1.1 Hardware Overview

The RFS7000 is a rack-mountable device that manages all inbound and outbound traffic on the wireless
network. It provides security, network service and system management applications.
Unlike traditional wireless infrastructure devices that reside at the edge of a network, the switch uses
centralized, policy-based management to apply sets of rules or actions to all devices on the wireless network.
It collects management "intelligence" from individual access ports/points and moves the collected information
into the centralized switch.
Access ports (APs) are 48V Power-over-Ethernet devices connected to the switch by an Ethernet cable. An
access port receives 802.11x data from MUs and forwards the data to the switch which applies the appropriate
policies and routes the packets to their destinations.