I was asked this question by a client recently, what you may be looking for is using the wlc and aps in pico mode.

Its documented in the mobility design guide however it suggest you use a specialist supplicant and work with cisco to deliver the solution

i'm very familiar with the 4404.. though have never experimented with the pico cell mode. Cisco's description of this mode is vague to say the least... doesn't sound like something that would be deployed when Joe Laptop is the end user.

You are correct, pico wouldn't work in your situation. It would be best to say use the 1252 or 1140 because of the gigabit interface. The maximum assocaition an ap can handle is 255. Again.... Joe Laptop might not support 802.11a. So if you have a maximum of 2000 users, you can maybe go with 20 AP's to support 100 clients per ap. If you know what the wireless will be used for, you can estimate how much bandwidth each user might take up.

i've successfully used the 1242aps, with a wlc4404... using both 802.11a, and 802.11b/g... though b/g can be miserable when the mass of laptops converge and step all over the 2.4GHz band. luckily about half the laptops that come in default to using 802.11a, and see no issues.

using these aps, i've found that allowing the wlc to dynamically adjust the power down to create smaller "cells" tends to help.. but there's no way around all the noise the large number of laptops create... at least in my experience.

So you are using 1242's with around 2000 users? How many ap's do you have? I know that these would work, I was just suggesting the other AP's because of the gigabit Ethernet. Do you also allow RRM to change channels?