In this final video in our series, Matthew Gast is going to talk about Multi-User MIMO, which is expected to come out in the second wave of 802.11ac access points. Multi-User MIMO depends critically on beamforming– the topic of our previous video in the series. After discussing 802.11ac beamforming, Matthew discusses how Multi-User MIMO works and what you can expect from it.

Watch this video to learn more on Multi-User MIMO:

If you missed the previous video blogs in our series you can use the links below to view them.

• An introduction to 802.11ac
• Planning Your Network
• 802.11ac vs. 802.11n
• Modulation
• Channels
• Beamforming

SPECIAL 802.11ac ONLINE EVENT ALERT: Join us Monday Sept 9 (5am - 5pm PST) for a virtual chat on 11ac with Wi-Fi expert and author, Matthew Gast, and analyst Craig Mathias. An opportunity to "ask the experts", as well as an opportunity to get a free signed copy of Matthew's new book: 802.11ac: A Survival Guide (O'Reilly). Learn more here. 

This week's 802.11ac theme on the Aerohive blog continues! 

Aerohive's Matthew Gast, author of 802.11ac: A Survival Guide(O'Reilly), will be speaking at Interop New York this October in a session titled, 802.11ac Reaches for the Top. In this video, Matthew hints at what will be discussed in that session, and why he wears shades.

SPECIAL 802.11ac ONLINE EVENT ALERT: Want to participate in a conversation on 802.11ac? Join us Monday Sept 9 (5am - 5pm PST) for All things 802.11ac, a virtual chat on 11ac with Matthew Gast, and analyst Craig Mathias. This special one-day online event takes place on Aerohive's HiveNation community and will provide an opportunity to "ask the experts" about 802.11ac, as well as an opportunity to get a free signed copy of Matthew's new book: 802.11ac: A Survival Guide (O'Reilly).

We wrapped up our 802.11ac online event, which took place on our community earlier this week. A bigger recap of the event will be posted later this week, but for now let's just say it was a great success.

• What makes 802.11ac so fast
• How and why it is poised to become the 802.11 standard of choice
• How you might want to incorporate it into your network plans

The Wi-Fi Alliance Voice-Enterprise certification program is a must-have if you are supporting real-time media applications on your wireless LAN. The certification gives you a one-stop shop for everything you need. Delivering “voice-grade” networking requires much more than simple prioritization and must also manage bandwidth, roaming, and battery life. 

Aerohive has recently put several APs through the paces of this demanding certification.

Voice-Enterprise builds on the priority-based access of the Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) quality-of service standard. In addition to the support for multiple queues to differentiate traffic, Voice-Enterprise requires support for WMM-Admission Control (WMM-AC). Admission control requires that before accepting a connection request from a mobile device, the network must ensure that there is sufficient capacity available to handle the new traffic.

Voice devices are typically used “on the move” and require a continuous connection while in motion. Voice-Enterprise tests the performance of transitions between APs, and uses the protocols defined in 802.11r-2009 to accelerate those transitions.

Typical voice devices also have relatively small batteries, and APs certified for Voice-Enterprise must implement the power-saving techniques in WMM-Power Save to extend battery life for mobile devices.

One of the reasons that the Voice-Enterprise certification test is rigorous is that it goes beyond protocol conformance testing and includes tests on performance. In the presence of background traffic, voice devices must maintain low latency and jitter performance with tight constraints on acceptable packet loss. For more information on the testing, see the Wi-Fi Alliance white paper.

With such a demanding test, it is a great pleasure to see that Aerohive is supplying half of the Voice-Enterprise certified APs on the market. There are eight, and we make four of them.

So, if you’re interested in high-performance voice networking, give us a call today or get in touch with us here.

The Aerohive Client Health feature simplifies monitoring and troubleshooting of connected clients by displaying  a green, yellow, or red status that details radio connectivity, network connectivity and application performance statistics.

In this feature whiteboard video, I explain the advantages and features of Aerohive's Client Health Score feature.

In the world of tech, there has long been a near-religious debate about how to gain more value from developed software. 

I mean, let's face it: with the readily available components and amazing advances in platform technology in the past decade (or maybe just Moore's Law), hardware platforms are very rarely the distinguishing feature in the decision to pick one vendor over another. Especially in the Wi-Fi world where pretty much the entire vendor pool picks from two major radio chipsets, the actual platform is just a commodity. 

The real value, the real reason to choose one company over another, is in the most precious thing a vendor can supply: software. 

Software defines a company's success or failure. It defines architecture - for example, cooperative control versus controller, flow-based forwarding versus stateless ACLs, and when to rely on embedded ASICs versus using the CPU. Software also defines performance, functionality, and yes, value. So when companies try to figure out how to monetize that value for whatever drives them (more money to invest in additional platforms and software, shareholder returns, M&A options, etc), there are a few different mindsets that have emerged. 

The first is feature licenses.

There were likely other companies who pioneered this idea, but the one that always comes to mind for me as the epitome of relying on feature licenses to maximize value was a company called CheckPoint. 

CheckPoint had a basic firewall product that provided awesome object-based rule sets for 25 users. If you wanted 50 users, you bought another license. If you wanted VPN functionality, you bought another license. 802.1X? License. You get the idea. This was basic "I'm setting up a firewall and need to do xxxx" functionality, not additional products like their later-added Antivirus capabilities or DLP. Those are actually separate software packages. More on that in a bit. 

It's important to note that Feature licenses aren't bad. They don't make a product not work or work slower or anything that would make feature licenses inherently awful. The problem isn't in functionality, it's in time-to-value and especially in renewals - try wrapping your head around co-term license renewals for 100 firewalls that were installed over the course of a year with different functionality on them. It takes a pivot table and a lot of patience. 

So anyway, speaking of CheckPoint, when a certain high-level engineer left the company and joined a competing new security company which some of you may remember as "NetScreen", he said it was for, among other reasons, one important one: No feature licenses. 

NetScreen made a name for itself as the first zone-based firewall and relied on the ease of installation and time-to-value to quickly entrench itself as one of the premier security companies in the Bay Area. Customers could enjoy frictionless access to everything from flow-based firewalling, advanced NAT, and yes, route and policy-based VPN policies. 

For those of you who don't remember NetScreen, maybe take a look at the billion-dollar IPO or $4B dollar sale to Juniper as an example of how valuable that frictionless time-to-value really is. 

Even at NetScreen, though, additional software packages did cost money: for example, adding anti-spam or anti-virus via partners like WebSense or Kaspersky required a subscription for that service. Just because it was integrated into the product didn't mean it was a basic feature or always included for free. 

So that brings us to the crux of the matter, which is how to distinguish a basic feature from an additional software package. 

As you can probably deduce by now, many of us who came to Aerohive in the early days were part of the NetScreen pedigree. Our founder, his staff of distinguished engineers and a certain product manager, maintained that customers should be able to go from Zero to Deployed with all necessary features for an enterprise-quality Wi-Fi network. This included (taking some creative license here with timeline for available functionality ;-): multiple SSIDs, QoS, Firewall, Spectrum Analysis for troubleshooting, WIPS, and yes, even VPN. 

Add to that even more value that Aerohive has developed over the years, such as Private Pre-Shared Key, Application Visibility and Control, API partnerships with premier companies like AirWatch and Ekahau, and embedded RADIUS with directory integration, and you can start to see a pattern: As users get more mobile, more functionality is required to qualify as "enterprise class Wi-Fi", and Aerohive has pioneered features and products to provide that value to customers with the price of a HiveOS device and our management service, HiveManager. 

Now you may be shaking your head and thinking "Aerohive does have additional licenses available on the price list." And to that, I'd like to say, "No". We have additional software subscriptions available for our customers as we work to provide more value in this ever-advancing world of mobility. 

Take ID Manager for example. This is an industry-leading product that eliminates the need for on-premises AAA appliances at every location to register, securely connect, and monitor guest users on the network. It allows a completely non-technical lobby admin or even a guest to register themselves, acquire a PPSK, and deliver the credential by anything from an email to a text to a Twitter DM. 

Awesome right? But not a basic feature. Without ID Manager, it is completely possible to create a bunch of PPSKs, print them out on strips or paper or keep them in a spreadsheet and have your front desk admin distribute them as he/she manually checks the guest in. 

In addition, when you purchase ID Manager, you buy it as a single SKU as a subscription service for the number of guest users you want to support. It isn't a per-AP purchase and doesn't require a degree in mathematics when you're ready to renew it. 

Another example of an additional software product is our Client Manager - this product allows an IT admin to offload the mountain of work it takes to onboard Corporate-Issued or BYO mobile devices, and then use the profile on the device to implement security requirements such as passcodes or restrict in-app purchases. 

But the basic functionality that allows an admin to apply different firewall, QoS, tunneling, and other network permissions to devices based on identity, device type, location, and time of day? Free. 

Client Manager makes life easier, but it isn't something that a customer must purchase in order to set up a successful Aerohive deployment. 

So anyway, with all the hullabaloo out on the Internetz these days, it seemed like a prime time to write this blog. Please find me on twitter @wifi_princess or type your comments below if you have questions. 

Many Aerohive customers are leveraging Aerohive's cloud networking services to centrally manage their locations from anywhere and accelerate their deployment time. In this video, you'll hear how Burgerville, Northwest Community Credit Union, and Dari Mart benefit from Aerohive's cloud networking solutions.  

Check out the video interview:

More Aerohive customer testimonials can be found here.

Founded in 2000, Nicolet National Bank is a customer-focused community bank with 23 branch locations primarily throughout the state of Wisconsin. With over 325 employees, and assets of approximately $1.1 billion, the bank is pleased to offer a wide range of financial services.

Several years ago Nicolet Bank deployed a wireless network in its Green Bay headquarters location, choosing Cisco for the entire solution. Soon after the initial deployment, the company began to receive requests from its commercial lenders and other employees to offer a wireless network solution for the branch offices. 

The company needed Wi-Fi to allow commercial lenders to access large documents when away from office headquarters, as well as enterprise-class features that would allow for greater control and monitoring. The financial provider was finalizing its disaster recovery plan and needed to partner with a company that could provide expertise and insight for its IT operations. 

Nicolet Bank chose Aerohive for its network at its headquarters, all branch locations and its disaster recovery site. The company uses Aerohive AP110 and AP330 access points, and HiveManager Online for cloud network management.

The Application Visibility and Control feature from Aerohive was crucial for Nicolet Bank, especially as the number of devices continues to grow and as the company is now offering a BYOD environment for guests and employees. 

Nicolet Bank is also using the integrated RADIUS server capability built directly into the Aerohive HiveOS operating system, available on all Aerohive access points. This was key for Nicolet Bank as it formulated its disaster recovery plan, consulting with Aerohive engineers on specific guidelines. 

One of the biggest benefits Nicolet Bank enjoys with Aerohive Wi-Fi is empowering its employees for complete enterprise mobility, especially commercial loan officers traveling to various branch office locations. 

Since deploying Aerohive, Nicolet Bank has been able to digitize 75 percent of all previously printed reports, and employees can participate in weekly meetings from any location. Boardrooms and community meeting rooms are connected wirelessly, with Apple TVs displaying and sharing meeting documents and eliminating the need for an additional wired network. 

To learn more about the Aerohive deployment, please see the full case study here.

This past spring, Harvard Square in Boston embraced BYOD and deployed Aerohive to offer free public Wi-Fi to millions of visitors. People come to the historical square for a variety of reasons and often stay awhile, checking out the many bookstores and coffee houses.

Click on the photo below to hear Denise Jillson, Executive Director of the Harvard Square Business Association, describe how Wi-Fi is transforming the Square. For a place that got its start in 1636, it's come a long way.

Read more about the Aerohive deployment in Harvard Square here.

About The Boyd Group

In 1990, The Boyd Group opened its first autobody collision repair facility in Canada and is the largest operator of collision repair centers in North America, with over 3,000 employees and more than 250 locations. 

With annual sales of over $430M, the company has grown through acquisition and looks to continue to expand its growth strategy in years to come.

Challenges

While the Boyd Group had Wi-Fi access at some of its locations previously, there was not a unified wireless solution across the entire company. Retail locations wanted to offer a guest network in its waiting rooms, as well as provide a captive portal page for greater advertising and marketing opportunities.

The Boyd Group wanted to switch to wireless devices for its daily operations, making a unified enterprise-class Wi-Fi network a more urgent requirement across all retail locations.

With locations across a large span of territory in North America, and with a small IT team, the company needed centralized remote management without controllers and a solution that could easily scale. 

The Solution  

Aerohive AP350 access points are deployed in each retail location, with over 660 APs currently implemented in the collision shops. Although all operations were not yet wireless, the Boyd Group replaced what Cisco equipment it did have with Aerohive solutions. Without a need for controllers, it was much simpler for the company to roll out a wireless network across its entire operations, even deploying in less than four months from the start of the initial evaluation.

Aerohive APs are also deployed at its headquarters location in Canada, providing Wi-Fi for executives, the accounting team, and employees operating mobile devices. HiveManager Online is used for all network management and control, giving flexibility to the IT teams based both in the US and Canada. 

The Boyd Group has set up a guest network at each retail location. The company is utilizing guest-specific SSIDs and the captive web portal to manage guest access. The company is also evaluating Aerohive BR100 and BR200 branch routers for use exclusively at new facilities to allow access right away to the corporate network.

The Results

When a typical customer now comes to a Boyd Group location, a technician can go out to the vehicle, input information and photos through a wireless device using software and applications that are directly uploaded to the corporate network for estimating procedures. 

One particular area of greater efficiency and accuracy is with paint operations for the company. Now, thin clients are used to connect wirelessly to corporate management software to enter vehicle information, photos, and enter data for necessary paint and body work that communicates directly with the paint instruments. 

Customers can now connect to Wi-Fi through the guest network while they wait. The Boyd Group will soon take advantage of more Aerohive features to block content and capture customer data for marketing programs. 

From its corporate board rooms, to its parking lots and customer waiting rooms, the Boyd Group has deployed a unified wireless network to enable greater efficiency for both employees and customers. 

To learn more, read the full case study here.

When it comes to the holiday shopping madness that kicks off with Black Friday, the show must go on ... no matter how crowded the malls are!

A recent survey revealed that despite concerns expressed by shoppers about crowded stores, long lines and items being out of stock, the vast majority (88 percent) of consumers still plan to shop in retail locations this holiday shopping season.

Aerohive and Euclid, an Aerohive solution partner and vendor in retail analytics, recently teamed up to co-sponsor a survey by Harris Interactive. The survey took a look at consumers and sales projections for the upcoming holiday season, which will officially be kicking off on Black Friday - the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States - in a few weeks. 

The Harris survey identified three major concerns of consumers coming into the holiday season: 

• Crowds: 42 percent
• Lines: 29 percent
• Items would be out of stock:15 percent

Retailers can understand customer behavior and trends and make changes in the store to diminish crowds, such as moving store staff to locations where shoppers are making purchasing decisions.

By understanding store shop times, retailers can provide an adequate number of checkout stations and the lines won't be so long. And, when in-store Wi-Fi connects to distribution centers and warehouses, those must-have items will be in stock.

“Retailers have been aggressively working to find incentives to keep consumers in stores and off Internet shopping sites, which is even more important during the holiday season, kicking off with Black Friday,” said David Greene, SVP product strategy for Aerohive Networks. “With technologies such as Aerohive Wi-Fi solutions and Euclid’s sensory technology, brick-and-mortar retailers now have the power to attract consumers more effectively and efficiently.”

To view the full report, visit here.

Watch as Education Networks of America (ENA) discusses why it selected Aerohive's controller-less Wi-Fi over competitor solutions as the WLAN of choice when helping schools implement their 1:1 and BYOD initiatives. Aerohive is allowing ENA, an MSP that services K-12 schools, libraries and public universities, to provide schools with a WLAN that is stable, scalable, and reliable in order to serve 1:1 or BYOD purposes.

Memorial Hermann Health System is the largest not-for-profit healthcare system in Texas and one of the nation's Top 5 large health systems, operating 12 hospitals and over 175 clinics. Founded over 100 years ago, the 5,500 affiliated physicians and 21,000 employees at Memorial Hermann treat more than 1.4 million patients annually.

In the fall of 2012, Memorial Hermann began evaluating its wireless infrastructure. The organization needed a solution that would provide greater throughput to support voice and video, and the numerous mission-critical medical devices and equipment that operate wirelessly.

Memorial Hermann evaluated several vendors including Cisco and Meraki, and chose Aerohive based on its controller-less solution that provided ease of deployment, a cost-effective scalable network and superior throughput. Memorial Hermann deployed Aerohive AP330 access points for its wireless solution.

Following a successful initial hospital deployment, Memorial Hermann began upgrading to Aerohive at smaller hospitals and will soon completely refresh its hospital location at the Texas Medical Center, its largest campus.

The healthcare provider has experienced flawless connectivity on the network, essential for its mission-critical operations. Memorial Hermann has also established a guest network with open access to anyone and the organization plans to utilize enterprise-class features from Aerohive like Private Pre-Shared Key (Private PSK) solution.

By the end of the rollout, Memorial Hermann will have over 6,000 Aerohive access points, with 800 Aerohive access points alone at its Texas Medical Center hospital location. All future clinics will be deployed with Aerohive and the provider is also considering using Aerohive BR100 and BR200 branch routers for executives and other IT employees located offsite.

To learn more about the Aerohive implementation at Memorial Hermann, see the case study here.

Visit the healthcare solution page for more secure and scalable networking solutions from Aerohive.

Check out how restaurant chain Burgerville provides knockout guest experience with their Wi-Fi network. From streaming its Burgerville radio station, allowing customers to live-Tweet to digital reader boards in its restaurants, to managing customer loyalty cards, watch Burgerville describe how Aerohive technology has changed retail operations:

For more about the Aerohive deployment at Burgerville, read the case study here.