By Kimberlee Jensen

Here at the Hive, we're not all business, as you know from reading our blog. Aerohive cares about giving back to our communities and we take the time to come together as a team to invest in community programs. Lately we've been busy bees helping out one particular organization we're passionate about, Family Giving Tree.

Aerohive again participated in the Family Giving Tree Back-to-School Drive this month, collecting backpacks and school supplies to equip low-income children with the tools they need as they head back to school.

So far, Aerohive employees have donated over 40 backpacks, and FGT predicts they will make this year's goal of providing backpacks filled with supplies to 27,000 children!

Want to team with Aerohive and donate? It's not too late to donate a backpack of your own at Aerohive's friends and family giving portal. 

The drive ends on September 5, so there's still time to bee on board! 

Here's to celebrating Back-to-School by giving back! 

To learn more about Family Giving Tree's backpack drive, and how your organization can participate in future programs, visit the FGT website.

Photo sources: Julia Ortega, Jenni Adair, and Family Giving Tree website.

By Tim Ruda, Customer Support Engineer at Aerohive Networks

Based on popular demand for answers to configuration questions, here is another FAQ-style blog with some helpful info for Aerohive best practices:

When integrating a server cluster using a Microsoft NLB (Network Load Balancer), considerations must be taken as to how the load balancing is performed, and what is required of the network in between the client and the server cluster containing the resources. 

Using MS NLB you will have two options for the operation of balancing: Unicast mode or Multicast mode. 

Unicast - When operating in Unicast mode, NLB will assign a "bogus" spoofed MAC to each node in a server cluster. Balancing is performed by responding to a client's ARP request for the IP of the resource with the spoofed MAC of the server to which the NLB chooses to push the client. 

Multicast - When operating in Multicast mode, the NLB will generate a "bogus" spoofed multicast address that is assigned to all server nodes within the cluster. When the client receives an ARP response from the NLB for the cluster, it will receive this multicast address. The communication from the client is then sent to each node in the cluster instead of one particular server. The selected server will then respond to the client request. 

In order for this balancing using ARP to operate properly, one must be sure that the switching infrastructure is prepared for this operation. If all the servers in the cluster and the NLB are connected to the same switch, static ARP entries are required for both Unicast and Multicast modes. 

The reason extra configuration is required is because clients learn the MAC from the ARP header, whereas switches will learn the MAC from the ethernet header. This means that the MAC the upstream switches will contain is the true physical MAC of each node in the cluster, instead of the spoofed MAC provided in the ARP response packet. 

In order for the upstream network to properly forward traffic, static ARP entries are needed on the switch to which the cluster nodes are connected. 

• In Unicast mode, you will want to ensure there is a static entry for each port that has the spoofed Unicast MAC assigned to the port of the applicable cluster node. 
• In Multicast mode, the spoofed multicast address must be statically assigned to each port in the cluster, allowing the client requests to flood this select port group. 

If these steps are not taken, the requests will reach this switch where the cluster lives, and the packets will be flooded out of all ports when the MAC is not found in the CAM table of the switch. 

This would cause what is known as switch flooding. As client load on the server increases, so will the amount of flooding. It is advised that the configuration steps above are performed before deploying an NLB. 

Assuming the back end network has been properly configured for the operation, there is only a small change on an Aerohive AP that is required to complete this setup. 

As stated above, L2 devices will learn MACs via the ethernet header of a frame and not the data contained in the ARP response. Any device that is performing ARP Proxy will end up storing ARP entries for the MAC of the NLB for each of the IPs in the server cluster. 

This means that each time a client attempts to ARP for the MAC of a particular server it is trying to reach, it will instead continue to see the entry for the NLB's physical MAC. The client will continue to retry communication and a symptom of a "timeout" will be experienced.

In order for a client connected to an Aerohive AP to receive the spoofed MAC contained in the ARP response from an NLB server, we will need to disable Proxy-ARP and allow the ARP responses to be forwarded down to the client, rather than cached in the AP. 

When the client receives the packet, it is able to look into the data of the ARP response and locally cache the spoofed MAC- functioning as the load balancing is intended to work. 

To make the change on an Aerohive AP, one must enter the network policy the APs are assigned to and simply check a box to disable this feature. 

With these changes made to your upstream network and to the Aerohive device configuration, the Microsoft NLB will be able to successfully trick the clients into contacting the different servers in the cluster.

When long-term care provider Daybreak Venture wanted to expand its wireless network across its 75 facilities, it realized its existing Cisco solution was not going to meet its needs. With facilities in Texas and MIssouri, the sites are geographically distant, and the healthcare provider operated many nursing homes in older buildings which presented infrastructure challenges. Adding controllers was not only cost prohibitive, but Daybreak needed a solution it could manage easily.

Daybreak deployed Aerohive APs across all locations, allowing the provider to set up Point of Care stations to document patient care with mobile devices. Residents and guests enjoy a reliable guest network and the organization is able to easily manage the network with HiveManager.

To learn more about the controller-less solution at Daybreak Venture, read the case study here.

By Tim Ruda, Customer Support Engineer at Aerohive Networks

Based on popular demand for answers to configuration questions, here is another FAQ-style blog with some helpful info for Aerohive best practices. Today's blog gives additional configuration details for quiet clients behind a mesh link bridge. 

Examine the following topology, as it is a less frequently used design for remote bridged networks:

In some use cases, it may be required or desired to bridge remote wired or wireless devices to a primary network by means of an Access Point (AP) connecting via Mesh and bridging its ethernet port. This has been seen on the educational market when using "portable classrooms" that are disconnected from the main building, or for trailers containing equipment that do not have a hard wired connection to the primary network.

In order for the clients behind the bridge-access port of a mesh AP to maintain a reliable connection, the mesh AP must maintain a list of MAC addresses that are connected below it. This not only allows the AP to route traffic from the clients over the mesh to the primary network, but also to advertise the presence of these clients over the mesh to the Portal access point; this component is necessary for traffic to be forwarded properly.

When connecting to the bridge-access port of a mesh point, one must consider a different form of a "quiet client" syndrome where specific users may not send any traffic upstream over the mesh link for an extended period of time.

a) Power-save clients

b) Time-clock systems which aggregate data and restrict transmission to intervals (i.e. every 1 hour, telnet session updates the punches)

c) Network printers that primarily listen and do not speak

d) and more!

When communication upstream is kept to a minimum by the client, the access point may think the client has left and will age out the MAC per normal operation. This prevents the MAC table from growing too large, but can also cause a side effect of quiet network clients being removed from the MAC table while still connected.

A user might experience that certain nodes become "unreachable" over the mesh link over time and must be pinged by a local network device in order for the client to generate traffic targeted upstream.

There are two configuration options that should be noticed when configuring a topology similar to the above design.

a) Idle Timeout

b) Static MAC Entries

Both of these configuration options can be found on the settings specific to the mesh point AP.

1) Select the AP in the Monitor tab and click "Modify"

2) Expand "Interface and Network Settings"

3) Ensure the desired ethernet port for bridging is set to "Bridge-Access" or "Bridge-802.1Q" depending on whether the port will be treated as an access port or trunk port respectively.

4) Expand "Advanced Bridge Configuration"

Idle timeout

Use the default timeout setting (180 seconds) to clear inactive, dynamically learned MAC addresses from the MAC learning table automatically, or change the timeout to a new value between 10 and 3600 seconds (1 hour).

If the client does not communicate up stream very frequently, it is advised to increase this idle timeout to allow the MAC to be retained in the table on the mesh AP, preventing any loss in traffic forwarding capability.

Static MAC Entries

Move statically defined MAC address entries to which the AP can forward traffic through its Ethernet interface from the Available MAC Address column to the Selected MAC Address column. If you do not see a MAC address that you want to use, click the New icon, and define it.

If an administrator wants to be absolutely certain a MAC will be retained in the table on a mesh AP regardless of how frequently it communicates, static MAC entries can be added to the AP that will be retained permanently. Since these are part of the running config of an AP rather than dynamically learned, they will be persistent through a reboot.

Using either one or both of these available configuration options, an administrator can be sure that low traffic clients can maintain a reliable communication channel over a mesh link when connected behind a bridge-access port.

Feel free to also check out my previous FAQ blog, How to configure Aerohive APs & Microsoft Network Load Balancer. Or, if you have your own questions about Aerohive Best Practices, please join our customer community, HiveNation, and ask your questions there. 

By Aerohive VP, Business Development Bill Hoppin 

“Opt In” these days too often means going from “Hello” to “What will we name our 4th child?”

Suddenly, by clicking (or not clicking) a box on an electronic form, the emails start coming, maybe even a text message or two, and worse yet these message seem to “know” a lot more about you than you have shared. This can get creepy and annoying quickly, and once a company has gone there with a consumer it is very hard to reverse.

Yes, you want to get great offers and personalized service, and maybe even a cool suggestion or two about products or services you didn’t know about, but these have to be “cool” experiences and work well. These communications need to be relevant and appropriate.

What retailers need is a platform whereby the “Opt In” can be incremental; “Let's get a cup of coffee” after “Hello”, and maybe if things go ok grab some lunch and learn more about each other. 

What I suppose I am saying with this analogy is that authentic relationships that are built between consumers and brands or locations or products are built in the same way that real personal relationships are developed: incrementally, over time, with the right relevance being critical.

This can even get down to the level of individual consumers at different times of day or based on their mood or urgency. If I am in a store and in a hurry one day, but a few weeks later I have time enough to browse and learn more I’d like each of those experiences to be very different. When I am in a hurry, I do not want to be presented with information about the newest product, whereas if I have time I probably do. Much like a personal relationship, empathy for what is relevant when you are engaging is important.

Aerohive’s Personal Engagement Platform is designed specifically to deliver this incremental opt in experience, courtesy of the unique cloud architecture upon which it is built. Applications can be deployed almost instantaneously, insights are deeply leveraged to understand what is happening in the consumer’s environment, and then optimized rapidly to get the delicate balance just right. 

Today this platform just got a big boost in the form of iBeacon integration with Aerohive Wi-Fi access points. With the addition of this new wireless sensing and triggering technology promoted actively by Apple, a world’s first for iBeacon in combination with enterprise Wi-Fi, a new and important layer of private, secure and appropriate engagement with consumers is now available. This marks the beginning of a new era in smart infrastructure that delivers compelling new experiences to drive loyalty and a much needed “cool” factor for retailers.

To learn more about Aerohive and iBeacon, follow Matthew Gast's blog series, starting with his first installment: Why is iBeacon important?

Here is today's press release announcing our partnership with Radius Networks: Aerohive Networks Delivers World’s First iBeacon™ and AltBeacon™ – Enabled Enterprise Wi-Fi Access Points

What happens when a power line is cut at your school and you're facing a network outage across three of your schools? In the case of Carlsbad Municipal Schools, that was the last straw. The IT team had to take a hard and fast look at replacing the Cisco and HP wireless solution with a controller-less network infrastructure that would ensure no single point of failure.

The large district in New Mexico deployed Aerohive across its 14 schools and uses HiveManager Online for centralized network management. Remote management from Aerohive is a breeze, especially compared to the cumbersome controller environment the district had previously, saving the IT team a lot of time and headaches.

More information about the deployment is in the full case study here.

The main buzz surrounding the iPhone 6 launch has been its bigger size and how great that will be for, say, anyone who takes photos, plays games, or reads email on-the-go. It's time to talk about the real winner: retail shoppers.

I don't mean the online variety. I'm talking about old-school, flesh-and-blood shoppers ...  people who physically go to a store and browse through merchandise for stuff they want to buy. 

The iPhone 6's larger screen is cool, and will definitely play a starring role in what will be a better in-store shopping experience. But there are other, less buzzed-about technologies that will be contributing to making that shopping spree a joy for iPhone 6 users:

• iBeacons - Apple's service for enabling a location-aware shopping experience.
• Wi-Fi 
• Personalized Engagement Software that encourages customer loyalty by offering personalized deals. 
• Support for Near Field Communications (NFC) - implemented by Apple as the new ApplePay technology that lets you make a mobile payment from your iPhone 6.

How Wi-Fi enabled smartphones combine in-store and online shopping experiences

Imagine walking into, or past, a store and having a notification pop-up on your (now larger and easier-to-view) iPhone 6 screen. You might for example, get a coupon, or an alert about popular accessories. Or, you may get asked if you 'd like to have someone set up a fitting room to try on a shirt you're admiring.

You could also use your phone - iPhone 6 or any Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone - to browse the store's "virtual aisle," by viewing merchandise that is still packed away in the warehouse, or located at another store site, but which could be shipped to you that same day.

This a personalized shopping experience that combines the benefits of online shopping - discounts, variety, shopping simplicity - with the physical experience of browsing in-store, in-person.

That personalized shopping experience is iBeacons and Wi-Fi at work. 

However, also included in that personalized shopping-experience mix is software such as Aerohive's Personalized Engagement Platform, which lets retailers leverage Wi-Fi enabled smartphones to create satisfied and loyal customers. Personal Engagement software lets consumers see deals on the fly, or just lets you know merchandise you have searched for is in stock now. Just like online, customers can always elect to opt-out of the personalized experience. However, for those shoppers who enjoy the convenience and efficiency, it's readily available. 

ApplePay: Making mobile payments from your iPhone 6

Next stop: Put down that wallet! Consumers can say good-bye to plastic credit cards thanks to the NFC-enabled iPhone 6 and ApplePay.

Step 1- Get an alert on your phone that the store you are near has your shirt on sale. 
Step 2 - Grab the shirt off the mannequin. 
Step 3 - Pay for it ... with your iPhone 6.

Who doesn't like less hassle?

A new, personalized shopping day

A real-time, personalized, in-store shopping experience flies in the face of retailers' previous, more bothersome attempts to target shoppers in which they 1- got customers to sign up for shopper reward programs and 2- spammed their email to death.

I, for one, have a special email address set up specifically for these rewards programs, and it is so overrun with spam that I rarely even look at it. I love to get stuff, but I don't like to spend a lot of time looking for it. And I love a deal.

Bring on the iPhone 6 (and iBeacons, ApplePay and personalized engagement software)!

Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD) is a large school district, serving 16,000 students and employing more than 1,500 faculty and staff. When its existing Cisco solution was at end-of-life and desperately outdated, it did not have the budget to adequately address its network needs, so it replaced Cisco with out-of-the-box rogue access points for a temporary fix. Ouch.

When the district received funds to upgrade the network, it knew it needed to take a broad look at what it needed for today and for the future. The district chose Aerohive for Wi-Fi across the entire district, with plans in place to upgrade to Gigabit Wi-Fi in the near future and begin using TeacherView for classroom control. 

For all the details, see the full case study here.

For the past three years, we've teamed up with American Red Cross to host a blood drive here at the Hive. And I have to say, despite the fact that a few people have gotten a bit woozy and/or even fainted, the volunteers keep rolling up their sleeves.

Last week Aerohive employees donated  an impressive18 units of blood, beating one of our earliest records, but after all, we've sort of got this blood donation thing down, going back to our first blood drive

Even some of our customers - such as Michigan Blood - are in the blood business and using Aerohive routers on mobile blood donation buses.  

How cool is that?

We're grateful for all those post-donation snacks, because it's always fun to treat yourself to some well-deserved goodies. Now we are looking forward to our next drive, which will happen in time for the holidays. We expect the same great turnout from the Hive as usual, but we also invite our Silicon Valley neighbors to stop by and donate as well. Follow us on Twitter so you catch the "give blood alert" tweet announcing that our blood drive is on. 

Here are some highlights from the day. See all those smiles? Giving blood is easy and fun!

I remember the first time I saw Wi-Fi in action. Of course, it wasn’t called Wi-Fi then. Back in 1999, it was this cool technology – if you could get $2,000 for an AP and $300 for a card in every client you wanted! If a child had been born in 1999, his or her parents would now be dreading the inevitable question of “can I have the keys to the car?” (Or perhaps, “when I can have an iPhone,” a product that wasn’t even a dream when 802.11 was first ratified…)

The Wi-Fi name didn’t come until later, when the first certifications were awarded in early 2000. The “Wi-Fi” name proved so strong that the organization that gave us Wi-Fi renamed itself after the successful program a couple of years later.

My own (small) part of the Wi-Fi Alliance story comes a little over seven years ago, when I attended my first member meeting and was elected as a task group leader. One of the Wi-Fi Alliance’s big early accomplishments was marshaling the industry together to bring the improved security that was part of the then-draft 802.11i specification to market. Many years later, the security task groups are still operating, and have such a durable charter that a couple of Wi-Fi Alliance board members jokingly say that the chair of security efforts is a tenured position. (Here’s hoping that I can at least make it a “ten-yeared” position; only two and a half more to go!)

Aerohive is, of course, much younger than the Wi-Fi Alliance, but we have been members from the dawn of the company. Industries that have well-defined ways of ensuring interoperability tend to support the emergence of aggressive smaller players that use standards to compete with much larger organizations. At Aerohive, we ensure that every AP we make is Wi-Fi CERTIFIED, contributing in small way to the nearly 20,000 certified products.

For some other thoughts, at a recent Wi-Fi Alliance meeting, we shot a video with several participants speaking about what it meant. You might even know a couple of people making appearances…

If there’s anything you want to know about the history of the Wi-Fi Alliance, or if there’s a particular story you think I have that you want me to tell, leave a comment!

Why we care iPhone 6 supports 802.11ac

iPhone 6 + iBeacons + Wi-Fi: In-store shopping ups its game 

When the iPhone 5 first came out, one of the major disappointments for me was that it didn’t have 802.11ac. Among the many new features in the iPhone 6 is that the Wi-Fi interface has been upgraded to 802.11ac.

Why is this important?

First up, it’s just plain faster.

The maximum speed of a single-stream 802.11n device is 150 Mbps, and that is in fact what the iPhone 5 supports. With a 40 MHz channel and short guard interval, the best you can do is 150 Mbps. A single stream 802.11ac device operating in an 80 MHz channel can do much better than that, with a top speed of 433 Mbps.

What does this mean for you? It’s likely that the iPhone 6’s Wi-Fi link is no longer the weak link in the data path to its server. (If it is, please help me get connectivity like yours!) In addition, the increased capabilities of 802.11ac reduce the iPhone 6’s demand on networks, helping any network it is attached to. I wrote about this in an article published in Wired last year, Why 802.11ac Helps Every Network.

Almost as importantly, as we’ve said for some time, 802.11ac improves range, and more importantly, the data rates at higher ranges.

Compared to 802.11n, an 802.11ac AP should provide better quality coverage. Just as 802.11n was sometimes called “better G than G” in reference to the many ways that it improved the performance of older 802.11g, get ready to experience how 802.11ac is “better N than N.” Every generation of Wi-Fi chipset incorporates all the lessons learned from everything that has come before, and typicallyoffers improved performance, especially in the challenging long-range operations. Some 802.11ac APs (including Aerohive’s AP230) are able to support transmit beamforming to improve signal quality. Finally, 802.11ac is mainly a 5 GHz specification, which improves speed by using cleaner spectrum.

~~~

Read more blogs on Apple's iPhone 6 and iOS 8 announcement:

iOS 8 upgrades threatening your WLAN? Let AVC throttle traffic 

iPhone 6 + iBeacons + Wi-Fi: In-store shopping ups its game 

This post kicks off the iBeacon series that I promised a couple of weeks ago in a blog. Thank you for all the suggestions on the community and in e-mail.

iBeacons are exciting because they let you know what you are near. In a restaurant? Have your automatically check you in and act as the “your table is ready” pager.  In a museum contemplating great historical works? Your iPhone can tell you more because it knows what you are standing next to, even if it moves around the galleries. In a store? Your phone can be the gateway to far more detailed product information than you can ever put on a store display.

The key to iBeacons is that it works by what you are near, and it does not need to know where you are. “What you are near” is often called “proximity,” which would be described informally along the lines of “I am within three feet of the front door at Aerohive.” In contrast, “where are you?” is a question that can only be answered with a coordinate system of some sort. (Or, if I let my physics background show, proximity is a scalar and location is a vector.)  Most importantly for us in the tech world, proximity can be deduced from location, but it requires that we compare two points in a coordinate system, and we have the resolution to locate our devices with the accuracy required. iBeacons are interesting precisely because you can tell whether you are near something without needing to first figure out where you are – an important advantage in indoor spaces where GPS does not work and you might not have the resources to create a coordinate system.
  
From the answer to the question “what am I near?” come all sorts of interesting ideas to augment applications. Proximity is the bridge between the physical world and a virtual world, and it lets the rich touchscreen interface of a phone or tablet guide its user through space and mediate those interactions. As the series continues, we’ll explore how iBeacons work in a larger system, how they enable devices to interact with the world around them, and what it means for you.

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Read more on iBeacons

Why is iBeacon important?

iPhone 6 + iBeacons + Wi-Fi: In-store shopping ups its game

iBeacon + Wi-Fi: Finally, "opting in" can be a win-win 

Listen to the recorded webinar, How Can iBeacons Help Your Business and How Are They Going to Change Everything? - to hear Matthew Gast, Aerohive's Director of Advanced Technology and O'Reilly author, discuss how iBeacons are changing the way mobile devices interact with their environment through enabling proximity services with pinpoint accuracy.

In this this recorded webinar, we introduced the basics of iBeacons to help you understand how to take advantage of this new technology. With so many users carrying intelligent mobile devices, the race is on to help those devices interact with the environment around them.

• Discussion will include:

• How iBeacons improve on previous methods of interaction with physical spaces
• Use cases such as using applications that can help your building automatically react to a customer's arrival or helping people navigate unknown areas where traditional systems like GPS don't work.
• How you can easily use iBeacons with your Wi-Fi network to take advantage of real-time data
• We'll be carrying on the conversation on our customer community afterward.
• Some folks will be getting a free copy of Matthew's book and an iBeacons. Please follow @Aerohive and retweet per contest alerts for a chance to win! NOTE: ALL TWEETS MUST INCLUDE #iBeaconWebinar

Registerhere: 

Need to brush up on iBeacons ahead of time? These blogs can help:  

iBeacon Part 1: What the heck is it?

iBeacon Part 2: How does it work?

iBeacon Part 3: You need an app 

Why is iBeacon important?

iPhone 6 + iBeacons + Wi-Fi: In-store shopping ups its game

iBeacon + Wi-Fi: Finally, "opting in" can be a win-win  

As the economy continues to grow and the private sector increases its workforce, enterprises need to ensure their wireless LAN infrastructure can scale to address these additional workers’ needs to get Wi-Fi access from their corporate devices as well as their own personal mobile devices. With HiveOS and HiveManager release 6.2r1, Aerohive is introducing certain new features to help enterprises scale.  

Application Visibility and Control for 500+ New Apps including Microsoft Lync

With 6.2r1, Aerohive is extending support for 500 new applications in its Application Visibility and Control(AVC) feature in HiveManager and bringing total support of over 1200 apps.  Some of the new applications in AVC include Microsoft Lync, Google Hangouts, Instagram, Snapchat, and Spotify.

Microsoft Lync is especially critical as more and more enterprises are using it for online meetings, instant messaging, and video conferencing. Aerohive now helps enterprises obtain granular visibility into all Microsoft Lync traffic such as presence messages, voice and video calls, and desktop and file sharing.    

Stateless Bonjour Gateway

With Apple iOS mobile devices continuing to be pervasive in many enterprises, Bonjour Gateway functionality becomes crucial in providing Apple services like AirPrint and AirPlay across large, multi-subnet networks.

With HiveOS 6.2r1, we created the most scalable Bonjour management service of all time, extending the capabilities of the Bonjour Gateway to handle a virtually unlimited number of advertised Bonjour services. Now even the largest educational institutions or enterprises can deploy Bonjour Gateway without worrying about any limitations.  

IPv6 Client Support with Security Guards

As IPv4 addresses start to become less available, many enterprises are beginning to add IPv6 addresses in their network. Aerohive release 6.2r1 is the first of a set of releases that will increase IPv6 support. In 6.2r1, Aerohive is providing basic IPv6 support and helping companies ease the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 networks. 6.2r1 provides security against rogue or misconfigured IPv6 servers and routers, adds RA (router advertisements) gleaning in HiveManager to help troubleshoot IPv6 client problems, and allows IT to disable IPv6 forwarding across the AP.

Aerohive can now be deployed where IPv6 addresses are present while providing security guards to prevent rogue wireless clients from harming other wireless clients.  

sFlow for Access Points

sFlow is an industry standard for traffic monitoring and is increasingly being used by enterprises to gather statistics and diagnosing the network. HiveOS now provides sFlow support on AP230, AP330, and AP350 access points. With industry standard sFlow, IT can get detailed traffic information, troubleshoot network issues, plan their network by examining traffic patterns, and detect security attacks. Aerohive also works with third-party apps like Wireshark, SolarWinds, or sFlowTrend to display sFlow information.   

These key enterprise features along with additional features in HiveOS and HiveManager 6.2r1 are now generally available to existing customers free of charge with a valid support contract.  

Note to readers: I’m writing a series about iBeacon. This is the second installment in the series, explaining just how iBeacon works. 

An iBeacon is a simple device, based on Bluetooth. To extend Bluetooth beyond the realm of audio devices, the Bluetooth SIG created Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), sometimes called Bluetooth Smart. Compared to “classic” Bluetooth, BLE uses lower power and lower data rates, as well as reducing the latency of sending data between BLE devices.

An iBeacon is a BLE device. Many are battery-powered, though quite a few are powered by standard USB power. One of the many device types defined by BLE is called a beacon, which broadcasts information to receivers. An iBeacon is a special case of a BLE beacon that uses the contents of the beacon’s transmissions in a way specified by Apple.

There are three main fields in an iBeacon’s transmissions:

• The Universal Unique Identifier (UUID)
• The major number
• The minor number

There is no formal requirement for these fields to be used in any particular way, but the development framework on iOS treats them as hierarchical. The most important number is the UUID, which will typically identify an organization. Depending on the application, it might be a company (say, like, the Hilton hotel company), a single brand within the company (Hilton Garden Inn), or, depending on the application, a service provider that deals with many organizations (a hotel’s Wi-Fi service provider).

The major and minor number are used to represent subdivisions of everything covered by a UUID. Although every hotel in the world may be represented by a single UUID, if you want to have your phone recognize the hotel where you have a reservation and assist with the check in process, you want to trigger actions only when entering a specific hotel. The major number is typically used as the main division between locations. It can represent an office or a building identifier, such as Aerohive’s headquarters in California rather than our Hangzhou development center. Within the context of retail or restaurant chains, it might be a restaurant or store number.

To further subdivide the physical space, there is also a minor number, which represents still further subdivisions. In offices, it might be an office number or conference room. In hotels, it could be a room number. In a retail store, it might be a particular display, such as shoes (which I choose in deference to a colleague who I won’t name here, but might be obvious to you anyway).

An iBeacon also includes information that helps a receiver figure out how far away it is from the iBeacon, but we’ll discuss that in a future post.

~~~

Read more on iBeacons

iBeacon Part 1: What the heck is it?

Why is iBeacon important?

iPhone 6 + iBeacons + Wi-Fi: In-store shopping ups its game

iBeacon + Wi-Fi: Finally, "opting in" can be a win-win 

Note to readers: I’m writing a series about iBeacon. This is the third installment in the series, explaining how iBeacon is nothing without an app.  

As I discussed in part 2 of my blog series on iBeacons, an iBeacon works by transmitting three numbers. Receivers can then interpret these three numbers to figure out what is nearby, and potentially take action.

Without an application on the device listening, an iBeacon does nothing. If an iBeacon transmits in the forest and no application receives anything, it does not make a sound.

iBeacons are triggers, but do not provide any sort of service themselves.

When an iBeacon’s transmissions are received, its numbers either match the numbers an application is looking for, and that application is triggered, or the identifying numbers do not match and no action is taken. Without an application to trigger, an iBeacon cannot do anything. Without application developers, an iBeacon is just another wireless transmitter.

After processing transmissions that match an application’s trigger, the application may take a variety of actions. It is within the application that the opaque numerical identifiers can be translated to a human readable message like “Welcome to the Aerohive Headquarters!” 

Due to the limited storage and processing power on most battery-powered receivers, most applications will interact with cloud services in some way.

An iBeacon is a trigger. What might you do when you walk up to a building? An application triggered by an iBeacon might itself trigger an action: unlocking doors, turning on lights, activating the coffee maker when your phone goes into the kitchen in the morning, adjusting building climate control from “empty” to “staff is present,” and so on.

Anything you can dream of and your application developers can build, you can do.

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Read more on iBeacons

iBeacon Part 1: What the heck is it? 

iBeacon Part 2: How does it work? 

Why is iBeacon important?

iPhone 6 + iBeacons + Wi-Fi: In-store shopping ups its game

iBeacon + Wi-Fi: Finally, "opting in" can be a win-win 

After many months of work, the 4th edition of the Certified Wireless Network Administrator (CWNA) Official Study Guide is available. Writing a book is a time-consuming and often aggravating process. However, whenever the finished edition arrives at my doorstep, I always react like Steve Martin does in this movie clip.

The CWNA paperback is available at Amazon, and the digital and iBook version are also available.

A lot has changed since the last edition of the book debuted two years ago. Many 802.11 amendments have been ratified in the last two years, and the defined technology has begun to emerge into the enterprise. Therefore, eighteen chapters had to be updated. 

• A new chapter about 802.11ac was penned.  
• Additionally, a whole new chapter was added about the topics of BYOD and MDM. 
• Another topic that is addressed in great detail revolves around the wide range of enhanced guest management capabilities now offered by the various Wi-Fi vendors.

Why is this book important?

Fifteen years ago, most networking professionals were new to Wi-Fi, therefore the need to educate themselves about 802.11 technology was apparent. The CWNP program has long provided the foundation for networking professionals to pursue WLAN education.

The beauty of the CWNP program is the vendor-neutral approach towards education about 802.11 technology. 

Join the discussion: Wi-Fi Do’s and Don’ts

At Aerohive Networks, we are also committed to education - not just about Aerohive solutions, but also about vendor-neutral Wi-Fi education. In the very near future, Aerohive will be making available for free Wi-Fi computer-based training (CBT) modules via training.aerohive.com.

In conjunction with these training modules, we will be hosting live, interactive events on our customer community, HiveNation. The first topic we will discuss: “Wi-Fi Do’s and Don’ts.” Stay tuned for more information on this first live event by reading our blogs, following us on Twitter, liking us on Facebook, connecting with us on LinkedIn.

Acknowledgements: 

I would like to personally thank my very good friend and co-author, Dave Westcott. Over the years, the CWNA Study Guide has been a labor of love for the both of us. The CWNA certification has long been recognized as the foundation-level certification for network professionals looking to validate their knowledge of 802.11 WLAN technology.

As authors, we have been humbled by the tens of thousands of individuals who have purchased pervious editions of the CWNA Study Guide to assist in their pursuit of the CWNA certification.

We are also humbled that many universities and colleges have selected the book as part of their curriculum for wireless technology classes. In our travels, we have met many of our readers of the past three editions of the book. We discovered that a large number of people who purchase the book use it as a reference guide in the workplace and not just as a study guide.

I would like to also thank the technical editors of the CWNA Study Guide: Marcus Burton and Andrew vonNagy, both of whom work for Aerohive competitors. Most of Aerohive’s competitors recommend CWNA education as a prerequisite for their own internal training classes as does Aerohive.

CWNE Fun Fact: Each member of Aerohive’s training team is a CWNE, a stat that was highlighted in the Incredible Training Team blog series. 

Note to readers: I’m writing a series about iBeacon. This is the fourth installment in the series, explaining how iBeacon leverages ranging data.  

Up to this point, the iBeacon series has focused on finding iBeacons and taking action. An additional benefit of the design of the iBeacon ecosystem is that the proximity information can be far more precise than with other networking technologies.

From the start, iBeacons were designed to provide high-accuracy information on the proximity of receivers. With such low power, iBeacons and their receivers almost always have a direct line of sight. By comparing the received signal power with calibration information in the iBeacon transmission, a device can apply simple calculations to determine the distance from an iBeacon.

Ranging information is available on iOS through the iBeacon programming framework, and several sample applications display the distance to a selected iBeacon. I am not aware of current applications that make extensive use of ranging information, so if you know of one, please leave it in the comments.

The two major use cases for ranging data are the ability to create an indoor location system. Although iBeacons supply only proximity information, that information can be translated into a location if the coordinates of iBeacons are known. Creating mapping applications that help navigation in complex spaces. I hope to see somebody create an app that helps navigate Tokyo’s sprawling Shinjuku Station.

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Read more on iBeacons

iBeacon Part 1: What the heck is it? 

iBeacon Part 2: How does it work? 

iBeacon Part 3: You need an app

Why is iBeacon important?

iPhone 6 + iBeacons + Wi-Fi: In-store shopping ups its game

iBeacon + Wi-Fi: Finally, "opting in" can be a win-win