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In the field of enterprise wireless networking, vendors generally offer Wireless Access Points (WAPs/APs) that are centrally managed from a Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) produced by that same vendor. For example, Fortinet produces the FortiAP series of wireless access points that can be controlled by a number of Fortinet-based solutions, including:
- FortiGate (wireless controller functionality integrated into FortiOS).
- FortiWLC (dedicated WLAN controller; product has since been discontinued).
- FortiLAN Cloud (cloud-based solution for FortiSwitch/FortiAP management).
Likewise, other vendors (such as Aruba, Cisco/Meraki, Ruckus, Ubiquiti, etc.,) will produce and maintain their own WAP and WLC offerings.
However, it is critical to note that Wireless LAN Controllers from one vendor will not be able to manage Access Points from other vendors. WLCs/WAPs are generally managed by vendor-proprietary management protocols, and this means that there is no expectation of cross-vendor interoperability, at least concerning managing the access points themselves.
Even if the network protocol itself is an industry-standard (such as CAPWAP for FortiAP/FortiGate management traffic), the management traffic carried by the network is not standardized.
As an example, it is perfectly fine to have WAPs from Ubiquiti on the same network as a FortiGate from Fortinet, and traffic can flow perfectly fine in this setup. However, the FortiGate would not be able to manage these Ubiquiti WAPs in any way, and so it can be necessary to have a separate Ubiquiti wireless controller to handle tasks like SSID configuration and user authentication.
As an additional note, there can be limited integrations between vendors based on partnerships or industry-standard network protocols (such as RADIUS for authentication or Syslog for logging), but these still do not allow for cross-vendor management of Wireless Access Points.
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