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Chapter 12 in the latest CWSP-204 textbook introduces the concept of Cooperative Control Access Point (CC-AP) Architecture. From the reading, it appears that there may not yet be any vendors that have fully implemented this idea? Or am I wrong? Can anybody tell me of any vendors or products that implement CC-AP architectures, or at least any vendors that are working towards this?

Aerohive use co operative control, its a really neat idea and personally I think the way forward for many vendors.

The intelligence is put back into the ap so there is no controller bottle neck.

There are some smaller systems whereby there is a clustering technology such as the Cisco AP541 but its not as scalable.

Does it rely on spanning vlan's at the core? Or does it perform some sort of mobile IP. By the way, if IPv4 goes away what would that mean for WLAN architecture in regards to roaming? I'm discounting teredo or v6 in v4 tunneling.

I dont have enough insight into the product to answer that Wireless Jon, but I am sure we can find out.

Regarding ipv6 never come across it YET I know its there and there are some restrictions certainly on Cisco, I dont think it supports it natively and in fact I am pretty sue it doesnt but wont say so as not 100%. The last I read it would be difficult to deploy ipv6 wireless with Cisco to say the least.

Not sure on other vendors position.

How much ipv6 are you guys in the US seeing

I can tell you all about em, got 5 Aerohive APs at home. Each AP trunks to the switch its connected to, so no need for spanning VLAN's back to the core, unless you have a collapsed routing infrastructure to a big honking core router that is.
I can't see why IPv6 would create much more difficulty. Basically everyone is working on implementations and its operating at Layer 3 well beyond the RF level. Of course the WLAN manufacturers will need to work out all the kinks in their infrastructure, but everyone needs to do that not just them.

I am mostly interested in the roaming methodology. So, how does a cca AP differ from a fat ap other than management? Not criticizing just curious about how things like roaming work. So, if you have a couple hundred closets running back to six cores, would you have you ap vlan on all the switches and cores? I am thinking the controller less architectures are probably gong to be the future, but I can't really imagine it in my head yet.

CC-AP is very different in that its running a specialized routing protocol and management protocol (CAPWAP) between the APs. The Aerohive APs also have firewall and IPS functionality built into them that fat AP's do not. Personally I think the most interesting thing that Aerohive has done is their QoS support, it seems way more advanced to me than other vendors.
I think, yes, I would tend to dedicate a set of VLAN's specifically for your AP management, etc. Although it would be possible to group them in different subnet's with different profiles from the management platform. The way I think of it is that each AP becomes a little WLAN controller, kind of simplifies the concept for me of how different it is.

That is fascinating. I'm familiar with CAPWAP, It provides a lot of flexibility in deployment. So the tunneling architecture is a mesh? or is it still a star like with controllers and designating an AP as the egress point? I've found that the controller is somewhat of workaround to deal with the lack of mobility built into IPv4. Self addressing sounds to solve some of this in v6.

Yes, its a mesh between them. It also gives them failover capabilities, where it can use a mesh link as the backhaul if the wired connection goes down. Of course if the wired connection is supplying PoE that doesn't really work anymore...

In case anyone is interested, the UNH-IOL (Univ. of New Hampshire - Interoperability Lab) has an IPV6 program for testing interoperability (of course) of different manufacturers IPV6 hardware.

Here is a list of companies in the IPV6 program which will give you an idea who is getting into it.:

http://www.iol.unh.edu/services/testing/ipv6/members.php

You can also see what kinds of details they are testing for to get a hint of the complexities involved.

This is just one of their many programs which include POE, wireless, and multi-gigabit Ethernet.