Wireless LAN Controller

NXC2500

The All-in-One, Intelligent WLAN Controller

Delivering a good wireless LAN service that stands up to the demands of connecting users to the rapid evolution application is not easy. The latest BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), mobility and smart handheld technology all present scalability, manageability and functionality challenges to business Wi-Fi installations. To enable businesses to addressing these challenges Zyxel has developed the NXC2500, an all-in-one, intelligent Wireless LAN Controller. The Zyxel NXC2500 is designed to provide resellers and businesses with a solution that works as an AP planning, deployment, monitoring and maintenance solution while offering management, authentication and guest access within an all-in-one device.

Benefits

The Zyxel NXC2500 Wireless LAN Controller supports the management of the Zyxel Unified, Unified Pro and NWA5000 Managed Series of Access Points to provide complete wireless LAN functions for the business. As standard the Zyxel NXC2500 supports the initial management of 8 APs and provides scalability with a maximum supported total up to 64* APs, the “pay-as-you-grow” principle provides reassurance and future proofing for small and medium-sized businesses, hotels and educational institutes to implement secured, centralized wireless LAN networks.

Adaptive and resilient Wi-Fi deployments

Surpassing the mesh networking technology, ZyMESH creates wireless mesh links with easy configuration, better management and enhanced reliability. ZyMESH eases extending Wi-Fi coverage to places where cabling is difficult. In addition, each repeater APs can have multiple route selections to provide high resilience achieving non-stop Wi-Fi service. In the past, administrators had to assign channel and MAC addresses in each AP while setting up a WDS link to extend Wi-Fi service; now they can make initial provision and centralized management with ZyMESH and Zyxel NXC2500 controller to manage and deploy networks easily.

Also, Zyxel APFlexTM simplifies installation by resolving the managed/standalone AP mode configuration, automatically integrating into the network environment with Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), eliminating the need for pre-installation preparation.

Enhanced RF management and WLAN optimization

All wireless networks face a major challenge: ensuring Wi-Fi clients get service levels they’d need. The difficulty to resolve is that different kinds of Wi-Fi clients exist on the network, and these users tend to make their own connectivity and roaming decision.

The Zyxel NXC2500 features with advanced WLAN optimization technologies that help administrators monitoring and maintaining health of the wireless network easily. Client steering utilizes functions of band steering and client signal threshold to match every Wi-Fi client to the best radio of the best AP. Band steering sets 5 GHz as the first priority to optimize network connectivity for dual-band clients. Client signal threshold ensures all clients connect to the APs with stronger signal. Auto healing is another WLAN optimization function that deployed APs detect status of nearby APs and adjust power automatically while failure occurred in neighboring AP. Auto healing provides reliable and always-on wireless coverage. The Zyxel NXC2500 also features dynamic channel selection to optimize Wi-Fi quality and performance while minimizing administration efforts by auto, instant channel selection.

Authentication with simplified management

The Zyxel NXC2500 uses comprehensive authentication methods to manage Wi-Fi accessibility for devices with AD, LDAP or RADIUS authentication servers. The NXC2500 also provides a built-in RADIUS server, a captive portal server and a DHCP server to facilitate small and medium businesses deploying secured employee and guest access services without any additional server.The user-friendly guest account generator can dynamically create user accounts for guests to log into a customized capital portal via QR code. The NXC2500 also supports applying external customized portal pages which largely benefit the access authentication in hospitality venues like hotels. Also, with IETF standard-based CAPWAP, secured communication can be established between the NXC controller and access points without changing the existing LAN infrastructure. The NXC2500 can offer a secured Wi-Fi network with easy installation for your business.

*Management of 64 APs is supported with firmware version V4.10 or above

Feature Highlights

High Scalability

The NXC2500 supports the management of the access points to provide complete wireless LAN functions for the business. As standard the NXC2500 supports the initial management of 8 APs and provides scalability with a maximum supported total up to 64* APs, the “pay-as-you-grow” principle provides reassurance and future proofing for SMBs, hotels and educational institutes to implement secured, centralized wireless LAN networks.

* Management of 64 APs is supported with firmware version V4.10 or above

Auto Healing

The NXC2500 has Auto Healing feature that detects status of neighbor APs and adjust AP power automatically to provide enduring network services. If an AP is not functional, the nearby APs will increase output power to cover the void area. Once the AP outage recovers, the nearby APs decrease output power automatically.

ZyMesh

The ZyMesh features of NXC2500 help extending Wi-Fi coverage to places where cable deployment is difficult. In addition, each repeater APs has multiple route selections to provide non-stop Wi-Fi services. ZyMesh enables to make auto provision and manage for multiple APs easily and centrally.

Client Steering

Client Steering sets 5 GHz as priority for dual-band devices to overcome heavy loading on 2.4 GHz, while client signal threshold transfer devices to APs with stronger signal. With these two functions, the NXC2500 ensures better radio resource usage to provide max wireless network performance for users.

Comprehensive Access Management

The NXC2500 offers easy dynamic account creation and versatile wireless user authentication methods for different application scenarios to provide smooth and secured access. The MAC authentication and customized captive portal adapted to suit the needs of enterprises, hospitability and public venues application. With captive portal via QR code access support, keyboard-less mobile devices are able to access Internet service instantly and securely.

NAT Traversal

The NXC2500 can facilitate the connections traversing NAT gateways to solve connection issue for AP and WLAN controller deployed in different subnets and to ensure the highest robustness of WLAN networks.

Secured Wireless Edge

The NXC2500 features with multiple network security functions to provide the most robust protection for the wireless network edge. The rogue AP containment and detection ensures to block malicious AP, while industry standard WPA/WPA2-Enterprise authentication, a variety of Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) frameworks and built-in firewall feature enables secure access against unauthorized or malicious activities in enterprise network.

Zyxel Wireless Optimizer

The NXC2500 supports Zyxel Wireless Optimizer (ZWO) to simplify planning, deployment and management of business Wi-Fi without costly on-site survey tools and additional sensors or location servers.

Application Diagram