What benefit does a Cisco Wireless LAN Controller provide?

A Cisco Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) centralizes the management and configuration of multiple access points (APs). Instead of individually configuring each AP, an administrator configures the WLC, which then pushes those configurations to all associated lightweight APs. This significantly simplifies deployment and ongoing management, especially in large wireless networks. Central AP management, while requiring initial setup, ultimately simplifies ongoing configurations and reduces complexity compared to managing each AP separately. Different SSIDs can indeed share the same authentication method when managed by a WLC. WLCs primarily support lightweight APs; autonomous APs are self-contained and do not require a WLC.