What does it mean to be a mobile-first enterprise and what networks are needed to accommodate the modern corporate user? What are the potential issues IT faces in a mobile-first enterprise and the advantages of framing the problems properly for long-term success and effectiveness? 

1. Design around the user, not the network
2. Unify wired and wireless management for seamless workflows and optimized application performance
3. Connect users properly to begin optimizing around them
4. Implement proper authentication and access even for guest and BYOD devices
5. Ensure security and enforcement is at the edge and user-centric
6. Optimize wireless (radio frequency) connectivity 
7. Ensure the network can handle the density that comes in with a mobile-first enterprise
8. Provide zero-configuration services to users to keep them productive
9. Simplify wireless problem remediation to ease IT’s burden
10. Provide the same access everywhere without remote hands

In the seventh installment of our “Aerohive Getting Started” series on how to deploy Aerohive controller-less Wi-Fi, we cover the next step, viewing active clients and using client monitor.

This video follows our six previous videos — (1) Introduction and Resources, (2) First Time Access to MyHive and HiveManager Online, (3) HiveManager Express Mode: defining employee SSIDs with WPA2 Personal (4) Defining a simple guest SSID, (5) Uploading the configuration to APs, and (6) Connect an iPhone to a guest SSID.

In the next getting started with Aerohive video blog, we will cover WLAN Deployments Using HiveManager Enterprise Mode: Getting Started. Click here to skip ahead and view all the videos now.

As everybody who is willing to put up with my descriptions of minutely technical features in Wi-Fi no doubt already knows, one of the key constraints on wireless LANs is that the data rate that can be achieved is loosely dependent on your range from the access point.

El Centro Regional Medical Center (ECRMC) is an acute-care facility located in the Southeastern California desert. Along with Pioneer Memorial Healthcare District, the facility serves the 150,000 people who reside in California's Imperial Valley.

ECRMC consists of a central hospital and four remote clinics, each requiring wireless network access. Like many U.S. community hospitals, ECRMC has limited financial resources and IT staff. These constraints are challenging, because community hospitals generally have most of the same IT needs as larger, well-staffed facilities.

Read the full case study to learn how Aerohive improved life for patients, doctors and nurses. 

 

"We found Aerohive's unique cooperative control wireless LAN equipment compelling enough to select them over vendors with longer histories in the healthcare arena. Our deployment success has proven the wisdom of our decision. Aerohive's pioneering technology and outstanding customer support have our highest recommendation."

John Gaede
Director, information Systems
El Centro Regional Medical Center

 

Don't forget: We are giving a free AP to qualified attendees!

The model in which software can be delivered to customers is going through a fundamental shift. Traditionally, organizations had to purchase, deploy, and operate software on-premise and invest in the appropriate hardware infrastructure to support the software. Many vendors that have been charging upfront software license fees and the associated maintenance fees thrived under this model in the past.

However, this upfront license fee model is proving to be unfeasible with customers. As demonstrated by Oracle’s disappointing Q3’13 results, customers are moving away from procuring upfront perpetual licenses toward a lower-cost model of getting software delivered through the cloud. 

Cloud is in, upfront licenses are out

In today’s economic climate, organizations are searching for ways to reduce expenses while continuing to improve profits, agility, and competitive advantage. Purchasing expensive upfront licenses do not help organizations achieve these goals. 

On the other hand, cloud services such as SaaS help to eliminate substantial upfront and ongoing costs found with licenses. In addition, the cloud helps organizations grow cost-effectively. Cloud services allow IT departments to instantly scale without having to purchase additional licenses to meet their growth needs. 

The trend towards using cloud services increasingly is clearly happening and there is no turning back. In fact, according to a recent article by Forbes, more than half of U.S.-based businesses are using cloud computing for their IT needs. 

Let’s examine how this trend of moving towards a cloud SaaS-based model relates to what’s occurring in the Wi-Fi space. Today, many Wi-Fi vendors sell and require a hardware controller to be deployed along with their access points. There are also upfront feature licenses required with these controller-based solutions.  

Depending on the vendor, upfront feature licenses could include a license for each access point, a license for each controller, a license for each redundant controller, and a license for each remote controller. Also, there are support costs for the feature licenses as well.

All of these upfront licenses lead to higher CAPEX which is misaligned with the needs of organizations today for them to stay competitive. The need to lower costs and becoming more agile are no different when it comes to companies looking to increase their Wi-Fi deployment. Companies will consider Wi-Fi vendors that offer cloud-enabled services instead of upfront licenses to reduce their capital expenses, reduce their time for deployment, and easily manage wireless LAN networks in many locations from the cloud.

Since Aerohive provides a controller-less (Cooperative Control) Wi-Fi solution, there are no upfront feature licenses that customers have to pay for or worry about. All features are included with the access points without buying any upfront feature licenses because these features are simply part of the network and not something you’d expect to pay for.

Also, with Aerohive’s cloud-based SaaS network management system, HiveManager Online, costs are further reduced as well as the complexity of deploying and managing network services.

In summary, the days of purchasing expensive upfront licenses along with its maintenance fees seem to be fading with the growing trend of companies moving to the cloud. Organizations simply cannot afford the upfront license software model to stay in business and will increasingly look to the cloud’s lower cost and increased business agility as a more viable alternative.

Vendors, including those in the Wi-Fi space, that continue to demand upfront license fees will likely experience similar future earnings results like Oracle.    

A few people have pointed me at Lee Badman’s blog on backhaul for 802.11ac, and it’s certainly a hot topic of conversation. Although we’re still early on the curve with 802.11ac (the Wi-Fi Alliance certification program hasn’t launched yet), any major network upgrade is being done with an eye squarely on how to make it work better for Wi-Fi.

With 802.11ac, then, the question is what kind of backbone is required to support 802.11ac now, and into the future.

Like 802.11n, 802.11ac will come to market in distinct waves. In the first wave, the capabilities will include 80 MHz channels, 256-QAM, and probably three spatial streams. That gets you to a peak rate of 1.3 Gbps. It’s fast, but not fast enough to outrun the gigabit Ethernet port coming out the back of the AP. Ethernet and Wi-Fi talk about speeds in very different ways; Ethernet speeds are quoted after the overhead of framing and medium contention, and Wi-Fi speeds are the peak data rate for the frame and ignore framing and protocol overhead.

Taking into account Wi-Fi protocol overhead alone pushes the “1.3 Gbps” back down below a gigabit. Early Wi-Fi networks struggled to get 50% of the peak data rate; 802.11n improved substantially but there is still significant overhead.

More importantly, 802.11ac speeds depend on the mix of devices attaching to the network. To get to that 1.3 Gbps number, the client device needs to support 80 MHz channels and three spatial streams. Many laptops will, but all the cool devices that everybody carries around are battery-powered mobile devices, which are nearly exclusively single-stream. Just taking the number back to a single stream drops the speed to 433 Mbps (and that’s with 256-QAM; if you can’t support 256-QAM, the speed is only 325 Mbps). Remember to subtract out protocol overhead, and you’re down to a couple hundred megabits. Fast – especially for a battery powered device! – but not backbone-breakingly fast. You’ll be fine with a single gigabit uplink, even once you have to add in the 2.4 GHz 802.11n radio.

When the second wave of 802.11ac hits, the typical AP is likely to support 160 MHz channels and four spatial streams for a peak data rate of 3.5 Gbps. However, single-stream mobile clients won’t see a huge boost. They stay stuck at a single stream, but may get a bump up to higher speeds by doubling channel bandwidth. It’s a raw speed of 650 Mbps (64-QAM) to 867 Mbps (256-QAM), but only when you can occupy the whole channel. If half of your traffic is from mobile devices at maximum data rates, that means that the rough offered load to the backhaul is around 2 Gbps  of wireless traffic. Subtracting out protocol overhead, and you’ll be fine with two gigabit uplinks.

Now add one more wrinkle into the discussion in the previous two paragraphs. I assumed that devices would be able to transmit using the full available channel width. In practice, to reach those speeds requires very clean spectrum so that transmissions will always use the wide channels. Although there’s a lot of spectrum available at 5 GHz, the newer channels are wide enough that adjacent channels will become a reality again. There might even be overlap, so cut those numbers down even further.

The big question: do you need 10-gigabit Ethernet backbones? If you have a lot of single-stream mobile devices (and who doesn’t?), then a pair of 1G uplinks from the AP are likely to suffice even in the second wave. Given that 10-gigabit Ethernet is only available on fiber now and power-over-fiber-Ethernet is a gigantic pain, it’s a good thing. 10-gigabit PoE switch ports aren’t needed for the foreseeable future.

To make a long post short: for first-wave 11ac, make sure you have a gigabit-capable edge. For second-wave 11ac, the gigabit-capable edge is still sufficient, but you’ll need two cables.

The cloud is subscription-based (which can be yearly or over multiple years) and does not lock customers in like a traditional bundle with a permanent perpetual software license. The cloud model gives customers the flexibility to use the service for a duration that works for them.

• There’s no additional charge for upgrades using a cloud model unlike a traditional bundle. The upgrades are handled by the cloud provider for free.  

• The cloud model enables access or changes to configuration of devices from anywhere unlike a traditional bundle that resides on-premise. The cloud model is even more ideal for organizations with distributed locations since it can provide a centralized place to view or make changes to one or many places.  

• The cloud model provides regular automatic backup/recovery capabilities unlike traditional bundles. There’s no need to set up a schedule to perform this task as you’d have to with a traditional bundle.  

• Traditional bundles require more intervention by in-house IT to deploy, upgrade, and support unlike the cloud service model. With the cloud model, IT staff is offloaded and can focus on other tasks.  

• Let’s not forget the reduction of upfront costs. A traditional bundle requires upfront capital costs for deployment. The cloud model lessens capital costs and moves costs to an OPEX model.  

Since its foundation in 1932, Septodont has developed, manufactured and distributed a wide range of high quality products for dental professionals. A global pharmaceutical company with $200m annual revenues and 1,200 staff, Septodont provides the anaesthetic for half a billion dental injections each year as well as manufacturing a range of surgical, restorative and preventive care products for dental practitioners. Septodont has six manufacturing plants in France, North America and India, and an international distribution network that is dedicated to serving the needs of dental professionals in more than 150 countries.

As part of a strategic project to roll out a new global ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, Septodont was keen to incorporate a robust business-critical Wi-Fi infrastructure to enable real-time data entry for barcode terminals and readers across the company’s manufacturing and distribution facilities. Aerohive’s controller-less Wi-Fi was alone in meeting the highest standards for a wide range of criteria.

"Aerohive’s advanced technical features combined with ease of use management capabilities ensures that we have a technically resilient and reliable infrastructure that can be scaled, configured, provisioned and managed simply and expediently resulting in lower cost of ownership."

Stephane Leuvrey
Corporate IT Director at Septodont

Read the full case study here.

One of the reasons that I like working at Aerohive is that we have a deep bench of talent. Today, I’m going to take a look at the bench from just one aspect: If you wanted to go read about Wi-Fi, what books should you pick up? Of course, we have a number of white papers you can read that describe how we’ve built Aerohive products, but where would you start if you wanted to get outside the realm of vendor-written material?

One place that people frequently start in Wi-Fi is the CWNA certification program. A number of Aerohive employees have been closely associated with the program since its inception. The official study guides are all written by Aerohive’s own David Coleman:

• Certified Wireless Network Administrator (CWNA) Study Guide. If you’re after the first certification in the CWNA sequence, start here.
• Certified Wireless Network Security Professional (CWSP) Study Guide. (David co-wrote this with another member of the Aerohive training staff, Bryan Harkins). As security became more complex, it was clear that a second certification was needed. This certification attests to your knowledge about how wireless security protocols work.
• Certified Wireless Analysis Professional (CWAP) Study Guide. Have a problem with your network you need to diagnose? This is the certification for you.

In addition to the CWNA courses, there is a deep well of technical information on Wi-Fi in and around the company. Bob O’Hara was the original technical editor of the 802.11 standard, and he wrote possibly the first book on 802.11 for the IEEE press (now in its second edition). It is rare to find somebody who was there from the birth of a technology who can write clearly, and Bob is one of those people.

Finally, you have me. I started writing about Wi-Fi when I broke into the industry, and I’ve continued to write as the technology has developed around me. (It was a bit awe-inspiring to step into Bob’s shoes as 802.11 revision chair several years ago.) 

My first book, now in its second edition, is the O’Reilly “bat book,” 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide. Read it to get a foundation for how the 802.11 MAC works, and the basics of the physical layers up through 802.11g. I suppose this is as good a point as any to answer a couple of questions about the book: (1) No, I did not pick the bats on the cover, though I do really like them, (2) Yes, I know the sendmail book has a bat on it, but it is a different bat.  I think the sendmail bat is actually a fruit bat, and mine are “real” bats.

My second book, 802.11n: A Survival Guide, came out last year. It’s a companion volume to the original book with updates for 802.11n. You can read it separately, but you do need to have a good understanding of how 802.11 works to get the most out of it. 

Fun fact about the 802.11n book: I suggested an animal, but didn’t get the one I wanted. My suggestion was for the Mexican free-tailed bat for two reasons: (1) it is the fastest bat in the world, and (2) there is a reasonably famous colony of Mexican free-tail bats that nests under the Congress Street Bridge in Austin, Texas, a city whose many fine qualities include being the headquarters of the Wi-Fi Alliance. 

O’Reilly was unable to obtain a wood cut of the Mexican free-tail bat, though, so I accepted another bat in its stead.

My third book doesn’t exist in final form yet. 802.11ac: A Survival Guide has been in the works since last summer, and is finishing up its technical review process now. O’Reilly has started a program called “early release” which lets you purchase the book now and read the book as it develops, and you get a copy of the final book when I’m finished. 

If you’re interested in being part of that, I do have an author discount code I can give you – just drop me an e-mail at (first initial)(last name)(at)aerohive(dot)com and I’ll send it to you.

Whether you are just getting started in Wi-Fi or are an experienced administrator looking for more detail on the how the protocol works so you can become a better network analyst, Aerohive’s authors have you covered. 

An extra bonus is that we’re all quite accessible. David and Bryan can be found teaching classes throughout the world, and I am often a speaker at our Hive User Groups. 

Any of us would love to sign books (which makes us feel like more famous people than we actually are) or talk to you about what you’re doing, so don’t be shy.

As we discussed in my last blog, Getting Started with HiveManager: Bell And Whistles, Part 1, Aerohive offers a vast array of “bells and whistles,” and our WLAN cooperative-control architecture can integrate into some of the most complex enterprise networks imaginable. An object-oriented approach is an efficient way to control the myriad of configuration settings necessary in a robust WLAN environment. The downside of object-oriented configuration is that often the vendor GUI is a disaster. 

The good news is that HiveManager GUI is very user-friendly with a workflow that assists the network administrator in a logical manner. This is the second in a series of blogs that will discuss the basics of Aerohive’s object-oriented configuration.

HiveManager is a cloud-based Network Management System (NMS) for simple policy configuration, firmware upgrades, and monitoring of up to thousands of Aerohive devices. These devices can be access points, branch routers, switches or HiveOS Virtual Appliances. Aerohive devices are configured via HiveManager through three easy steps in the following order:

1. Network Policy Configuration – A NetworkPolicy is an amalgamation of various configuration settings that can be applied to multiple Aerohive APs, switches, and routers that share a common characteristic, such as being located at the same site or working together to connect multiple remote sites through VPN tunnels. The type of Network Policy you choose depends on whether your Aerohive deployment consists of only wireless devices (APs), a combination of wireless and wired devices (APs, switches and routers), HiveOS Virtual Appliances or perhaps Aerohive devices deployed exclusively as Bonjour Gateways.

1. Device Specific Configuration – In contrast to the Network Policy settings, which you can apply to numerous devices, there are also settings that are best applied to individual devices. These are settings such as their location on a topology map, radio profiles, interface settings, and login credentials. Aerohive devices can also operate as RADIUS servers, RADIUS proxies, VPN servers and DHCP servers. Any time an Aerohive device functions as a server, the server configuration settings are specific to that device.

1. Update Devices– Once you have configured the more generic Network Policy settings and the more device-specific settings, you upload the configuration from HiveManager to the devices as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

The HiveManager Network Configuration GUI consists of three panels as shown in Figure 2. You can click on any panel header to migrate to the respective panel. Clicking on the Configure & Update Devices panel automatically saves the Network Policy configuration. Clicking on the Save or Continue buttons also will save the Network Policy configuration.

Figure 2

Panel One – Configure Network Policy: As shown in Figure 3, the Network Policy panel is where you first choose, create a Network Policy.

Figure 3

When you create a Network Policy, you must give it a name and then choose the components of the Network Policy. As shown in Figure 4, you can configure four different types of Network Policies, which all have different purposes as well as different configuration workflows. Furthermore, HiveManager gives you the capability of Unified Policy Management. You can create a Wireless Access Network Policy and then later add Switching and/or Branch Routing to the policy.

Figure 4

Panel Two – Configure Interfaces and User Access: After you take the first step of selecting your Network Policy, you then proceed to the second panel where the Network Policy configuration takes place. The great news is that despite the many bells and whistles that exist, HiveManager will walk you through the configuration process. Different workflows exist for linking various configuration objects together. A more in-depth explanation of the core objects will be discussed in the next blog. Figure 5 depicts a Wireless + Branch Routing network policy that was created for a bed & breakfast in New Albany, Indiana – The Admiral Bicknell Inn.

Figure 5

Panel Three – Configure and Update Devices: Once you have finished configuring your Network Policy, you click on the third panel for the final two steps. From this panel you configure device specific settings and you can also upload all the configurations to the devices. First you must configure the device specific settings. To do this, select and the checkbox next to the device and then click on the Modify button or simply click on the hostname of the device

Figure 6

You can now begin the device specific configuration. For example, you can assign the device a Hostname, designate a logical location, and assign the device to a topology map. As shown in Figure 7, all radio settings are configured here such as operational mode (client access and/or mesh), Radio Profiles and channel/power settings. Radio profiles are detailed settings for your Wi-Fi radio interfaces. Radio Profile settings include, band-steering, load-balancing, background channel-scanning, high-density settings and much more.

Figure 7

As seen in Figure 8, other device specific settings include the management interface IP settings, and the operational mode of the Ethernet ports. More advanced settings include device classification tags and service settings to designate RADIUS, VPN or DHCP server functionality.

Figure 8

Once you have completed your device-specific settings, it is time for the final step: uploading the configurations to the devices. Simply check a single device or multiple devices and then click on the Upload button as shown in Figure 9.  The Network Policy configuration and the device-specific configurations will then be sent to all the Aerohive APs, switches and routers. The very first upload sends the entire configuration and a reboot will be necessary. All subsequent uploads only send configuration changes and no reboot is necessary.

Figure 9

To quote Michael Jackson, “Easy as 1-2-3 and as simple as do, re, mi.” – Aerohive devices are configured via HiveManager through three easy steps:

1. Network Policy Configuration
2. Device Specific Configuration
3. Update Devices

In the final installment of the “bells and whistles” blog series, we will discuss the different types of Network Policies and the major core objects.

Getting Started with HiveManager: Bell And Whistles, Part 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To access online training videos that introduce the HiveManager GUI and guide you through HiveManager configuring a network policy step by step, along with several other basic HiveManager configuration procedures, click here. For Part 1 of this blog, click here.

The training videos are best viewed in full-screen mode on 14" screens or bigger. Also, ensure that sound is working.

Antwerp University Hospital is one of Belgium's leading hospitals and is renowned for the superior quality of its patient care. It employs more than 500 physicians, specializing in more than 40 different fields, to treat more than 180,000 patients every year. With more than 570 beds, the hospital offers a wide range of diagnostic and treatment services — including specialized services in the fields of cardiac science, neuroscience, surgery, critical care, and ophthalmology. 

The hospital offers comprehensive care for patients with complex disorders. Everyday its specialists conduct pioneering clinical research, constantly using this research to develop new treatments, with the ultimate goal of providing every patient with top-quality medical care.

The hospital was looking to implement a high-performance WLAN that could support staff, patients, visitors, and students studying at the university. The existing WLAN, however, was unable to support the hospital's ambitions or provide the scalability they needed as a growing organization. Now with Aerohive’s controller-less Wi-Fi, staff, patients, and students have continuous high-performance connectivity and can utilize a variety of devices and applications to do their job as required and without impacting network performance.

"Anywhere, anytime connectivity throughout the hospital is vital for providing staff with access to bedside medical applications such as qcare, metavision, pdms, and c2m ... Aerohive’s controller-less architecture minimizes points of failure in the network."

Wolfgang Wauters
ICT Manager
Antwerp University Hospital

Read the full case study here.

The Employee Pet of the Month is Tiffany Wagner’s dog LEO!

Employee: Tiffany Wagner, Opportunity Development Manager
Pet Name: LEO aka Choo-Choo, Leo-Bear
Age: 5 1/2 months
Breed: English bulldog
Favorite toy: Stuffed Baked Potato, Sko

 
Tells us a little about him/her:

Leo was born on 11/21/2012 and joined our family late January of this year. He was delivered to us from his mamma Lola and dad Diesel who is a gold medal show bullie and weights a monstrous 65 lbs. Leo was born with a personality like no other; he will capture your attention at any cost and is definitely one of a kind. You often think of bullies being fat and lazy, smelly and loud sleepers but Mr. Leo is the exact opposite, well most of time. He is full of energy and excitement and he wants to share playtime with anyone he meets. Some of his favorite things to so are play fetch at park with his dad and brother Sko, walks, car rides, breakfast and dinner, hide his toys in the backyard, lick your legs for no apparent reason, play with his sister Luna, eat anything and everything in sight, climb all over you, terrorize the home, tug of war with his toys, jump on the couch, jump off the couch, and of course sleep. Although Leo is very outgoing and energetic, he has the biggest heart and a gentle demeanor. Leo has been such a great puppy, every one that meets him instantly falls in love. The best part about Leo is that no matter how many people or dogs he meets he will always be mommy’s little boy.

He's my best friend and has given me a new meaning to life :)

~~~

The "Employee Pet of the Month" is a friendly event run by the HiveForce committee of Aerohive employees leading the charge in community, culture and fun. 

We’ve talked a lot about Aerohive’s public and private cloud offerings. There is another term that does not necessarily pertain to us, but it is worthwhile to discuss. That term is a hybrid cloud solution and it can take advantage of the merits of both types of cloud services.  

• Separation of data - In a hybrid cloud model, you can keep sensitive data behind your firewall and inside the private cloud. At the same time, you can leverage the public cloud for less sensitive information. This is probably the biggest reason why many companies like to deploy a hybrid cloud solution.  

• Phased scalability - Creating a private cloud can require some time (possibly several weeks or months) effort from the in-house IT department. The hybrid cloud option enables the use of a public cloud service to increase scalability quickly that is required while you are building the private cloud. 

• Management acceptance - The hybrid cloud diffuses reluctance from upper management that may have little knowledge or they fear using public cloud service due to perceptions of lack of security. With the hybrid model, management can feel solace that sensitive information can be kept in a private cloud while realizing the low cost benefits of using a public cloud service for other data.  

District Hospital (KKH) Erding Dorfen needed a wireless network that would support the immediate needs of medical staff, and which would easily scale to become the primary network for administrative staff, consultants, and patients. All this, with minimal disruption to the IT department’s day-to-day operational load.

The hospital chose Aerohive W-Fi to meet its requirements. By centrally managing its WLAN using Aerohive's network management appliance, HiveManager, KKH Erding Dorfen’s IT department can easily configure and monitor network performance, and quickly remediate any client-network connectivity issues.

• 802.11ac and Matthew's upcoming book, 802.11ac: A Survival Guide, which is due out this summer and focuses on the upcoming gigabit Wi-Fi standard.

• BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and how planning for the widespread usage of personal Wi-Fi devices is affecting most organizations.

• Density - more devices are coming on Wi-Fi, creating a network density problem. How do organizations manage high-density Wi-Fi scenarios?

NHS Lincolnshire is the sixth-largest primary care trust in England, located in the East Midlands of the country. It is responsible for both improving the health of its citizens and for the delivery of health services across Lincolnshire County. It commissions healthcare for over 700,000 people, and manages a wide range of community-based services such as local GP surgeries, community hospitals, and clinics.

NHS Lincolnshire prides itself on its responsibility to commission comprehensive high quality, best value care that takes into account best practice and clinical quality; and which reduces inequalities and assists the population to live longer and healthier lives.

The organization wanted to offer all its employees the means in which to work asefficiently and effectively as possible, including the provision of access to the NHS N3 system — one of the largest Virtual Private Networks in Europe. With the Care Trust’s catchment area consisting of a wide range of geographic locations, from population centers such as Lincoln to more remote areas in the south of the county, it was critical the system was simple to deploy, had zero touch for IT, easy user adoption and provided the same great level of connectivity regardless of location — from central office workers like HR directors and administrators, to teleworkers like GPs and nurses working from home.

NHS Lincolnshire needed the ability to deploy connectivity to a large volume of workstations, over 6000 accounts, each running business critical applications, such as patient appointment management In order to meet these requirements, NHS Lincolnshire deployed Aerohive WLAN.

Read the full case study here.

The Employee Pet(s) of the Month are Steve Koch’s dogs Gamble, Jackpot & Teddy!

Tells us a little about him/her:

Gamble is a Las Vegas Show Girl, coming from the famous Puppy Patch on Sahara. She was acquired with the winnings from a great night of cards at Bellagio. She is the Alpha female in every situation and rules with an iron paw, but makes sure everybody is treated well.  

Jackpot was a rescue from a very bad situation. He had 4 homes in his first three years, but has now been in his “forever” home for 5 years. He is faster than lightning, and leads visitors to where his orange ball has gotten stuck, and demands they free it for him. It’s fun to see guests crawling on the floor looking for toys under beds, couches, and the coffee table.

Teddy Bear is the snuggle lump of the family. He’s allergic to almost everything. He grumbles when he’s not happy, and goes into a trance when you rub his tummy. He loves to piss-off Gamble. You would think he would learn. Teddy is NOT the sharpest tool in the box, and has STILL not figured out how to pick up a Frisbee while standing on it. 

Together, they guard the neighborhood from the rogue giraffe, and keep all the elephants off the lawn with the help of their good buddy Domino, who is the doorbell extender of the house

~~~

The "Employee Pet of the Month" is a friendly event run by the HiveForce committee of Aerohive employees leading the charge in community, culture and fun. 

Who: Aerohive Networks (that's right - us!)

Where: Sunnyvale, CA

What kind of deployment: Aerohive BR100 Wi-Fi Router with a 4G module attached to a custom drone made by Aerohive Vice President of Product Management, Adam Conway.

 

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Extreme Wi-Fi deployments

Welcome to the Extreme Aerohive Wi-Fi deploymentsblog series. In these blogs, we will give you a quick-hit glance at some fascinating – and extreme(!) –  controller-less WLAN deployments to give you a sense of how flexible our cloud-enabled solution is.