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Cooperative Control Architecture

The continued migration away from autonomous access points, the evolution of wireless networks to support mission-critical/real-time applications and the arrival of 802.11n demands an architecture that provides enterprise wireless LAN infrastructures that are easier to deploy and expand, lower cost, more reliable, more scalable, higher performing and more suitable for voice-over-wireless.

Introducing the Cooperative Control Enterprise Wireless LAN Architecture from Aerohive Networks. Aerohive's approach is based on the same architectural premise as the that found in dynamic routing protocols in the Internet or in the WAN, or in Spanning Tree in the LAN - by distributing the control and data plane, redundancy and optimization is built into the system, and by centralizing management functions, it can all be run from one location. Aerohive's Cooperative Control architecture eliminates controllers by increasing the functionality of the access points themselves, bringing control closer to the edge of the network. The APs organize themselves into groups, or "hives," that share control information between them. This Cooperative Control approach enables functions like fast layer 2/layer 3 roaming, coordinated RF management, security, and built in mesh networking. APs can dynamically route around any problems or failures, and adding another site is as simple as adding another AP. Management is provided by a central HiveManager. Unlike a controller, the HiveManager is not essential to traffic processing, and one HiveManager can control an entire deployment, be it building-wide, across a campus, or around the world.

Aerohive's cooperative control architecture brings all the benefits of controller-based wireless LAN architecture to the enterprise, but is easier to deploy and scale at a lower cost, with higher performance and reliability than controller-based architectures. To fully explore the benefits of this architectural approach and the key underlying technologies of cooperative control, best path forwarding and policy enforcement at the edge, download the Aerohive Networks Cooperative Control Architecture whitepaper.

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