Allegany County Public School District Turns to Aerohive for Security and iPad-Readiness

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Sunnyvale, Calif. — June 28, 2011 — Aerohive Networks, the pioneer in controller-less Wi-Fi and cloud-enabled networking, today announced that Allegany County Public Schools has upgraded its WLAN with an all Aerohive solution to accommodate an influx of Apple iPads, and other popular Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices coming onto its wireless network. The district’s Superintendent wanted to provide students with an enriched learning experience by letting them use the same devices in the classroom as they use at home, and this meant upgrading its WLAN.                                                          

News Facts

  •  Allegany County Public Schools, located in Cumberland, MD, is comprised of 24 schools with 9,000 students and 700 staff. Allegany has 4,000 computers on its network as well as 2,000 laptops that roam among classrooms via rolling carts.
     
  • Allegany’s Wi-Fi-enabled mobile device initiative required an 802.11n upgrade from its existing 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN (WLAN) in order to accommodate the new bandwidth-hungry clients such as Apple iPads. In selecting Aerohive as its WLAN vendor, Allegany in fact completely changed WLAN architectures. The school district made the bold decision to replace its existing controller-based 802.11a/b/g wireless network with Aerohive’s controller-less, 802.11n-compliant wireless platform.
     
  • The decision to change Wi-Fi vendors was based largely on economics: Security requirements would be met by Aerohive, at no additional cost. Prior to learning about Aerohive, deployment plans had included the purchase of an expensive Network Access Control (NAC) security solution, which would be coupled with its 802.11n WLAN.
     
  • Authentication onto Allegany’s network via Aerohive APs is based on Active Directory and ties in with student login, accommodating the multitude of Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices.
     
  • Allegany has employed a three-tier security approach to allowing devices onto its wireless network. One for school owned property i.e. teacher’s devices, a second for student owned equipment and a third for guest devices that come on the network (Internet access only).
     
  • Allegany is using Aerohive’s HiveManager Virtual Appliance Network Management System (NMS) which runs on VMware in the schools virtualized data center infrastructure. HiveManager is an out-of-band management system for simple policy configuration, firmware upgrades and network monitoring.
     
  • To read the full Allegany case study, please visit http://www.aerohive.com/resources/allegany-county-public-schools

Comments

“We ended up evaluating six different competitors before going with Aerohive, but the truth is we didn’t have to look at the demo long before deciding Aerohive was the solution to go with,” said Jeff Blank, Supervisor of Networking at Allegany County Public Schools.

“We immediately noticed the potential for significant cost savings with Aerohive. We had to invest in the wireless upgrade to 802.11n no matter what, so getting Aerohive’s security features as part of our WLAN deployment was just icing on the cake,” continued Blank.

Blank also likes how Aerohive’s controller-less architecture executes security in contrast to traditional, controller-based WLAN platforms. “Usually firewall and security take place at the controller. This means viruses traverse your network until they get to your controller,” he says. “In contrast, Aerohive’s security takes place at the edge, so it’s like having a traffic cop at every corner,” concluded Blank.

About Aerohive Networks

Aerohive Networks reduces the cost and complexity of today’s networks with cloud-enabled, distributed Wi-Fi and routing solutions for enterprises and medium sized companies including branch offices and teleworkers. Aerohive’s award-winning cooperative control Wi-Fi architecture, public or private cloud-enabled network management, routing and VPN solutions eliminate costly controllers and single points of failure. This gives its customers mission critical reliability with granular security and policy enforcement and the ability to start small and expand without limitations. Aerohive was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. The company's investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Northern Light Venture Capital and New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA). For more information, please visit www.aerohive.com, call us at 408-510-6100, follow us on Twitter @Aerohive, subscribe to our blog or become a fan on our Facebook page.

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