Without describing basic WLAN forwarding, OpenFlow, or SDN, I’m going to jump in and start discussing HREAP and close with questions and thoughts pertaining to protocols of choice for achieving a “controller based network.” 

For those that aren’t familiar with Cisco HREAP, it is a design for Wireless LANs in which only control traffic gets tunneled back to the controller and the data traffic stays local on the switch.  The IEEE protocol used to communicate between an AP and a controller is called CAPWAP. There are various use cases for the technology, not described here, but that is the 100,000 foot overview.

So, looking at the diagram below, we see a very basic implementation of HREAP. 

It's a little late, but this blog post was motivated after reading the following write up at GigaOm from back in March.
http://gigaom.com/2011/03/23/are-home-networks-destined-for-cloud-based-networking/#react-tabs

Taking a look at Software Defined Networking and then again at what Meraki is doing, I wonder if there are synergies behind the scenes or if there will be in the future?  Meraki is focused on simplified network device management, calling it Cloud Networking, which can even be seen as a SAAS based offering for a network management tool on steroids.  Pretty slick demo shown at the latest Wireless Tech Field Day 2.  And I do agree with Om Malik that something like this could be the future of home networking.  Partnering with Meraki, it could be a nice offering for the cable providers out there simply by adding a Meraki device and simplified management to a consumer's cable bill.