Fat (Autonomous) APs

FAT AP is also often referred to as a "autonomous" AP. These fat APs would often be placed in public spaces such as cafes, lobbies, or CTO offices where providing a high number of users with wired network connection would be impractical or could present a security issue. Autonomous access points function independently from other access points (APs) and are unaware of their existence. In addition, autonomous access points are controlled singularly unless a management platform is utilized.

Controller Managed AP’s

The addition of controllers and network management systems to wireless installations brought new features that greatly simplified the task of network administration. Yet substantial expenditure and resources were also necessary to enable a single point of management for Wi-Fi deployments. Large corporations were often the only ones with the resources to deploy controllers and management features because to the high expense of doing so at the time. Wireless LAN controller-based deployments involve the centralization of the management and control planes at the controller. Depending on the deployment circumstance, the data plane may be either centralized or switched locally at APs. Organizations were able to scale their Wi-Fi deployments to thousands of APs to meet demand while simultaneously introducing the necessary management functionality by incorporating controllers.