Wireless 2.0 February 1, 2010
Posted by Devin Akin in : Uncategorized , trackbackMaximized Minimalization. Yep, that’s what it’s all about.
What kind of wordsmith would I be if I had called the blog “less is more”? 
We’ve been saying, “Simpli-Fi” for a couple of months now, and we are beginning to wonder if anyone “gets it.” Our existing customers get it, but for the unreached masses, there’s an important story here.
The enterprise Wi-Fi market is undergoing tremendous growth, with predictions of enterprise Wi-Fi market doubling in the next 3 years. The way that Wi-Fi is being used and the requirements on an enterprise Wi-Fi network are also going through a fundamental and generational change, so much so, that we are calling it Wireless 2.0. It’s not a new term, but it is a relevant one.
Today, there is an explosion of Wi-Fi enabled devices, a potential 10X client performance increase with the 802.11n amendment and the migration of Wi-Fi from convenience to mission-critical Ethernet replacement networks. This is driving the enterprise to demand a new type of Wi-Fi infrastructure. Enterprise’s want a secure, multi-service infrastructure capable of supporting different application (voice, video, data), user, and client types as though they each had their own networks. A ubiquitously accessible, low-cost, mobile network with wired-like resilience and determinism, that is easy to use and deploy, is expected. In other words, enterprises want the mobility and productivity of Wi-Fi with the scale, performance, resilience, and ubiquity of the Internet.
We believe the way to maximize in each of these areas is to minimize. Let’s talk about how to do that.
Step 1 – Minimize Components
The controller was a stop-gap from the git-go. Ask Bob O’Hara. He’ll tell you. Well, in fact, he did…right here: Bob Speaks.
Controllers fixed some problems, and because there was such an insane demand for things like fast/secure roaming and radio resource management, controllers got their day in the sun. Near the beginning of that time period, AP component prices were extremely high, so building the MAC-daddy (pun intended) AP was pointless. Who would’ve bought them? Not me. Today is a completely different story.
Between then and now, there have been some very fast changes in the market. The market went from needing only a shared control plane to needing that plus much more – like massive scalability and throughput support, near 100% uptime, and low cost. It just so happened that right as controllers hit their peak, the economy hit the floor.
Aerohive’s architecture allows us to do in software what everyone else is doing in hardware. Using hardware to share the control plane has severe scalability, cost, and resilience problems. Remove the controller, and all of those problems go away. That leaves us with only a management system (called HiveManager) and APs (called HiveAPs), which enables linear and unlimited scalability at a major cost reduction.
How much hardware are we talking about removing anyway? Well, there’s the rack of controllers (depending on your network size), your branch office controllers, and even your redundant controllers. How many controllers can you possibly need anyway? Just wait until the 800 pound gorilla starts forcing you replace your edge switches with wired/wireless controllers (so that they can scale). Your pocketbook is going to take it in the shorts even more then that it does now. 
Step 2 – Minimize Costs
Removing all forms of controller evil from your network will get you half way there, but there’s more to the story when it comes to costs. If you’ve recently bought a controller-based solution, you know this already. There’s AP licenses, feature licenses (remote AP, firewall, WIPS, VPN, and so on – for all controllers including the redundant ones), and of course each controller maxes out at a certain number of APs…so that means more controllers. Oh, I’m not done yet… There’s also hidden costs like rack space and cooling as well.
Did I mention that protocols are free? Aerohive does in software what everyone else does in hardware. The competition will throw FUD all day long about “their APs costs more than ours” or “their management system costs more than ours”, but when you compare the solution cost with apples-to-apples features, they (meaning all of them) aren’t on the same playing field. It’s actually quite funny to listen to our SEs’ stories about how the competition has to take all profit out of their quotes to even be competitive. J I wonder how that’s working out for the competitors…
Aerohive also thinks that it’s very important to offer cost flexibility to its customers, offering a variety of APs and a variety of management solutions. On the management side alone, HiveManager is offered as a 1U, 2U, HA, Virtual Appliance (Virtual Machine), and a SaaS (online) solution. Which you choose depends on your organization’s size, shape, and budget type (CAPEX/OPEX). HiveManager also comes in two “flavors” called Express and Enterprise.
I chose HiveManager Online (HMOL) Express to run my home network…but hey, that’s just me. You can choose whichever you like since they all do basically the same things, just in a variety of delivery modes.
Step 3 – Minimize Failures
The End Game: adaptive, self-healing, self-optimizing, application-aware Wi-Fi infrastructure. That’s what it’s about. I like to describe it as “you can’t kill it.” In this resilient infrastructure, there are no single points of failure, uptime is maximized to near 100%, and due to the minimal number of components, typically hardware failure rates (which affects every enterprise vendor in the same way) affect the customer less.
Aerohive achieves this goal through use of stringently-tested software capable of link-state, best-path forwarding at Layer-2. Yes, Layer-2. An AP dies, no problem. An Ethernet switch dies, no big deal. A cable gets cut, so what? Think of Aerohive as a hybrid of the “mesh-only” vendors, that have mesh down to a science, and the access vendors who give it their best shot to do mesh (but just suck at it). Built from the ground-up as a mesh/access hybrid, it functions like the Internet. Think about how the routers on the Internet are autonomous, yet talk to each other through routing protocols (a control plane function). Aerohive’s control plane protocol suite, called Cooperative Control, works like a Layer-2 routing protocol – managing control functions like RRM and fast/secure roaming.
A significant part of minimizing failures is through stringent QA testing to minimize compatibility and functional problems. Nothing ships until a large group of testers (inside and outside the QA department) approves it. Recent reports from InformationWeek and Webtorials both show that reliability is far-and-away (90% in one survey, 64% in the other) the most important vendor evaluation criteria.
Step 4 – Minimize Complexity
Am I the only one sick and tired of complex GUIs that give wireless network administrators a feature fatigue headache? How about figuring out how to divide up groups of APs into individual controllers of varying capacities, licenses, and physical locations? Deployment and configuration complexity is simply unnecessary. Put the APs where they should be, based on a site survey, and be done with it.
Aerohive is pioneering the Automatic Wi-Fi Transmission (not trademarked in case you want to copy it). “Simpl-Fi” is plastered across our homepage. We have recently launched HiveManager Online (HMOL) with Express and Enterprise options. HMOL couldn’t be any easier: automatic provisioning, no appliance to worry about, automatic backups, fully redundant, etc. The benefits go on and on. Aerohive is taking the pain out of Wi-Fi.
Step 5 – Minimize Security Holes
Wi-Fi security is like Medusa (the Greek gorgon). Hopefully that’s a clear enough mental picture. You have to consider role-based access control (often just referred to as a role-based firewall these days), WIPS, 802.1X/EAP, PSK, secure management, and more. Every which way you turn, there’s another security concern.
Aerohive covers all of these bases and then some. For example, why would you want to use PSK when you can use Private PSK (PPSK)? Aerohive’s founders and senior staff originated with NetScreen, which sold to Juniper. Need I say more about security? Holy smokes, these guys KNOW a little somethin-somethin about security. (sorry for the GA slang…couldn’t resist).
Summary
Anyone with a networking architecture background can easily see that all roads will eventually lead to a distributed architecture. It’s the only way to scale, provide resilience, and to minimize costs. Look at your routed or switched networks. Look at the Internet. All distributed…everything at the edge. All the controller vendors are tinkering with their Wireless 1.0 architectures, distributing functions in a vain attempt to re-optimize themselves for a Wireless 2.0 world. Even Motorola and Cisco we hear. Aerohive has had a distributed approach for 3 years already. Do you want to trust a sub-optimal, half-baked product from the big boys or a third-gen, fully-mature product from the leader in controller-less Wi-Fi? Hey, I’m just sayin’…
Comments»
Speaking from first hand experience with an Aerohive wireless network, I would have to agree with all of the above. One thing that wasn’t mentioned here was ease of deployment. They HiveManager has a site survey feature the takes the guess work out of AP placement. This feature will save you time and money. I am happy to report that since our deployment March of 2009, we have had 100% uptime!