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East Brunswick School District Selects Aerohive's Controller-less WLAN to Expand its Wireless Network
Cost-effective and Easy to Deploy Cooperative Control WLAN Solution from Aerohive the Right Choice for School District's Distributed Network
SANTA CLARA, Calif., August 17, 2010 — Aerohive Networks, creators of the award-winning cooperative control wireless LAN (WLAN) architecture, announced today that East Brunswick School District (EBSD) located in central New Jersey has selected Aerohive's innovative WLAN solution to wirelessly enable its 11 schools and administrative building.
Like many school districts throughout the country, ESBD was looking to enhance its student's learning experience by increasing access to computers. Unfortunately, the current wireless network was ill-equipped to handle the increase in network traffic. The district decided it was time to find a better way. "By wirelessly enabling the schools, we'd have more flexibility to give students the computer and network access they need for group studies and science labs," explains Tinos Rousos, senior network manager at the district.
For that goal, Rousos evaluated most of the major wireless LAN equipment makers, but found it challenging to find one that was cost-effective and could provide a wireless LAN that could be centrally managed. "Many vendors required hardware controllers that were not appropriate for our needs and would bring additional costs," says Rousos. "We wanted an architecture that could go throughout the school district without those additional costs per school."
ESBD opted for Aerohive Networks Inc.'s award-winning Cooperative Control architecture. Cooperative Control combines an enterprise-class access point, called a HiveAP, with a suite of cooperative control protocols and functions that bring all of the benefits of controller-based architectures but without the cost and complexity of traditional controllers or overlay networks. This design makes it possible for multiple HiveAPs to self-organize into groups called "hives" that share control information between HiveAPs to provide functions such as fast layer 2/layer 3 roaming, and cooperative RF management, as well as security and mesh networking. In addition, unlike controller-based networks that create a single point of failure, HiveAPs work together to recover from hardware and system failures without requiring redundant hardware.
The first school to receive the new Aerohive-based wireless LAN was Hammarskjold Middle School. "The rollout went very smoothly," explains Rousos. "We conducted a number of tests on configurations and authentication services, and once that was in place, HiveManager made it very easy to apply our networking policies to the HiveAPs," he says. For the physical installation of the HiveAPs, drilling was kept to a minimum as the access points fit cleanly on existing cable panels. For classrooms, where both wireless and Ethernet were required, the district installed HiveAPs equipped with dual-port functionality so that the same cable drop could be leveraged for both wireless and wired connections.
In addition to the ease of deployment made possible by Aerohive's controller-free architecture, Rousos appreciates the mesh network abilities of the design. Because HiveAPs become aware of each others' presence, they are able to use cooperative control protocols to provide seamless mobility, cooperative RF management, resiliency, and best path forwarding. "With the Aerohive architecture, we know that if an AP goes down, for whatever reason, we don't lose wireless capability. The network will still run strong, and we'll still have access to all of our resources," Rousos says.
Since the recent Aerohive WLAN installation at Hammarskjold Middle School, the district has expanded the network to include an administrative building. "I've found managing, as well as expanding, the Aerohive network to be very easy. Adding an additional five APs to the administrative building took only a couple of hours to physically place the APs and apply the same policies we designed to extend the network to an additional location," he says.
The network is managed through Aerohive's HiveManager Network Management System (NMS). HiveManager NMS enables simple policy creation, firmware upgrades, configuration updates, and centralized monitoring throughout an entire Aerohive deployment, whether building-wide, campus-wide, or global - from within a single console.
To read the full East Brunswick School District case study, please visit http://www.aerohive.com/resources/east-brunswick-school-disctrict.
For more information on Aerohive's HiveAP and HiveManager, please visit http://aerohive.com/products.
About East Brunswick Public Schools
Children are the focus of the East Brunswick Public Schools. Our chief goal is to help each child in the East Brunswick Public Schools develop to his or her fullest potential. Each individual is different and therefore our efforts must be directed toward identifying and satisfying individual needs. Accordingly, we encourage diversity and flexibility in our programs. Inherent in a democracy is the recognition of the importance of the individual and of the school's responsibility for preparing each student for an effective role in our society's growth, management and preservation.
About Aerohive Networks
Aerohive unleashes the potential of enterprise Wi-Fi, enabling customers to stop buying copper, to move applications to the air, and to maximize workforce productivity. The company's award-winning cooperative architecture eliminates costly controllers, saving money and providing unprecedented resiliency, up to 10X better application performance, and an opportunity to start small and expand without limitations. Aerohive was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. The company's investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Northern Light Venture Capital. For more information, please visit www.aerohive.com or call 408-510-6100.
