What is Aerohive’s Bonjour Gateway and what does it mean to the BYOD trend?
The Bonjour Gateway is an out-of-band technology that runs on Aerohive Access Points, allowing the use of Apple services such as file sharing, AirPlay and AirPrint across the entire network.
- Removes the inherent limitations of the Bonjour protocol in an enterprise network.
-
Filtering - Decide which services can be accessed across the VLAN
s.
- Multi-Vendor - Works in both Aerohive and Non-Aerohive networks.
- Plug and Play - No requirement for VLAN and Multicast gymnastics.
Why is Aerohive’s Bonjour Gateway important? The BYOD explosion, that’s why!
- VLANs, do you have or need them in your network? If you have lots of devices, departments or services then the answer should be "Yes," as we use VLANs for two purposes: network growth and security.
- Do you have or plan to use Apple devices and services on your network? With the explosion of smart phones, tablets and ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) in the workplace, again the answer is probably "Yes."
- Bonjour is a protocol that provides ‘Zero Configuration IT’, allowing new devices on the network to automatically discover and use services such as printers, Apple TVs, and file servers simply by listening for Bonjour announcements then connecting through the click of button.
- Sounds great, but sadly Bonjour service announcements only work in a single VLAN. So if you have services spread across different VLANs due to, say, location or department, then you won’t be able to access them if your device is located on a different VLAN.
- To overcome this problem, Aerohive’s Bonjour Gateway is attached to all VLANs where Apple services are located, and forwards the ‘local’ Bonjour announcements between VLANs so that they can be accessed anywhere, anytime by anyone that you allow.
Where can I learn more?
