nicko17

Aerohive is a great fit for this type of deployment as its feature ritch like Aruba, but has no controllers so you can just add AP's and dont have controller costs. Its the same concept as a switch, router or the internet, with centralised management and fully distributed control between the AP's its fantastic. I love it and many other schools I know who have it say the same, great feature called teacherview as well which may be of interest, I would highly recommend it! Oh and they also do a great free evaluation process, check out Aerohive Networks, the leader in cloud-enabled networking

i use aerohives hive manager which is cloud based, but unlike any other solution its not a controller just a central management software allowing you to see the performance of the network and ap's...... one tip i would say- get way from your controllers there old out dated and serves a purpose that no longer is needed, do it at the edge.... you wouldnt have a bouncer in the middle of a night club stoppping people coming in would you, there on the doors at the edge!!! Aerohives honestly works exceptionally check it out

Well perhaps you havent looked at the technology in depth Aerohives is completely different, i previously had other system vendors who have a centra controller, aerohive do not have a controller, there access points are high end peices of technology with each ap having the processing capabilities and functionaility you would expenct from a controller. The APs i previously has were as good as paper weights when i had controller problems, the bloody thing didnt work. I just let my network run now all the intellegance is done in the AP no need for me to do anything happy days!!!!! I have 30 laptops all log on at the same time with no issues what so ever! I would say if your going to make statements suppport them with actual knowledge of the technology or some previous usage of it..... Aerohive wouldnt be where they are on the Gartner Magic quadrant if they were simular to other vendors

yes i have just because I am impressed, although I would to also like to point out, I have mentioned other solutions such as meraki aruba etc, just providing my overview as i am impressed with it

take a look at this and tell me what you think, its on their website i have it in my school and its unreal, lets the teacher be teacher and not play IT person... i love it, makes my job a hell of alot easier!!

are you using .11n devices, you will have this problem running this ammount of users on a network that doesnt support .11n, most cosco kit is crap i used it in the past. theres about 20 different costs and uses a costly controller........ as i was once told by someone 1% of ciscos revenue comes from wireless..... so do you really think they do much with it? no they just buy small companies and stick their name on it, then all the people from these companies leave and go to specialist companies. I would advise looking at solutions such as aerohive merakia aruba if you want to get the best in wireless, they are specifically wireless companies!!!

I thought this I have got a solution called Aerohive, not sure if you have heard of them. They are making some great progress in education both sides of the pond. I have got my system implemented and have multiple users around the school. All AP's are fully featured and do not have a costly slow controller!!!!!! I thought wifi in schools was a bad idea to be honest, but I have now had this solution in for 6 months, was so impressed i have now rolled out more AP's lighting up new areas of the school. I am also working on a new project for a large secondary school down the road, rolling out Aerohive there. They run VOIP aswell for their teachers and staff around the school..... if you are having problems and looking at upgrading definately would recomend aerohive guys very intuitive!

A thread where users can share their experiences and past experiences with other people who are looking to implement a wireless in their schools.....

i bought the hive 120's and paid around 550 pounds this is a 2x2 mimo dual radio .a/b/g/n. Also each AP has its own Radius server, Firewall, Dynamic Meshing and QoS capabilities, and theres no feature liscences everything comes in it..... you can get a 3x3 mimo dual radio called the 320 i think.... but i didnt need this one all depends on your needs and requirements... do you have a WLAN then plexer, if so who are you using?

One of the things i was very impressed with was the simplicity of pricing its a very easy concept with no hidden costs that pop up later....... I am using their cloub based management tool which suits me due to its cost benefits with the quantity of AP's i have deployed. I literally purchased the access points and then the annual cost of 65 pounds to use the Aerohive hosted management tool in the cloud. This 65 also includes support aswell, i was informed that there were discounts for multiple year buys i beleive around 130 for three years... but i must check on this. This is all I pay. All updates are free and is done through the HiveManager. There are also other options available for your hive manager a VM version and a 1 u and 2 u appliance, these become more cost effective when deploying larger networks. If this is your chosen platform you also have to pay a one off cost per ap as a liscence to speak to the management tool, not much, around 50 i think. Lastly with the vm or appliance you have to have support which is around 40 i beleive but once again im not too sure as i dont have this, but i do remember being told that discounts are available for buying in multiple years........ One thing that I liked about aerohive was that i knew what my costs would be as knew that when i wanted to add more i knew exactly how much it would cost. In terms of comparisons with others meraki and aerohive are of a simular level but meraki has a contoller and is not very strong with its features. With ruckus you need to alsobuy a controller which is further outlay, but ap cost is simular to that of aerohives plus feature liscences for meshing roaming voip etc..... i would say one thing have a look at the case studies on aerohives website they been doing great things with education both sides of the pond and maybe have a look at there demo's there worth a look, free planning tool with a topology report, give you an idea of what coverage you will get sorry if it seems like a story does this help lol?

I have used aerohive for my solution in my school, we have laptop trollys and multitude of users at once. I am really looking forward to Aerohives new feature, TeacherView!!! Definatly get in contact with them, theres some interesting tools and demos on their website aswell as some good case studies and whitepapers, drop me pm and I can let you know about my project I worked upon

yes i gathered that aswell after reading this thread in my lunch break today lol........ One thing I would say is that I recently had a wireless system implemented at the school which I work for. I was initially looking at Meru, Xirrus and Meraki, and out of those three prefered Meraki due to its ease of deployment. A few weeks further i was contacted by someone at aerohive and was explained their approach to WLAN. Which tbh sound too good to be true to begin with. After meeting one of there representatives and reading some indepth information on their solution i found that it was in fact even better than i previously thought. One main issue with all school at the moment is budget, Aerohive assured me that their solution provided scalability with no hidden costs....... They have no costly central controller that has a stepping costing structure. I initially purchased 6 ap and their management tool, which is simply software.... not to be confused with CONTROLLERS... In recent months we have had more budget free up and have now lit up another 3 areas of the school adding more access points. It was as simple as plugging them into the switches and pushing the congigeration and we was off. One thing i would say regarding Meraki, after spending time reading countless whitepapers is that they still have a controller, its just cheaper as it is a cloud based version, so really no different in basic architecture to other vendors. As someone has said before I would recommend looking into the technical abilities of each vendor and their solution and finiding the best solution that fits best for you. No one solution is the definitive one to have. For me yes it was Aerohive, for others maybe not. One thing i would recommend is perhaps going on there website and looking at one of their white papers, particully the economics and architechture wp!!! Definatly worth looking at the whole market. Hope this is informative for you, defo look at Meraki and Aerohive though, im sure you will be impressed