The Enterprise Wireless Networking Blog

It’s almost January and the “Year in Review” season is upon us. Tackling this topic, analyst Lisa Phifer (president of Core Competence) tripped back through wireless network time, laying out Wi-Fi milestones that happened in 2010 in a Wi-Fi Planet contributed article.

Putting an upfront focus on 802.11n, Phifer says that the wireless standard “finally achieved a maturity level where analysts no longer debate whether or not it will replace Ethernet for network access.”

She does note, however, that questions still remain around “how quickly – and what tweaks are needed to optimize operation, performance, management, and of course ROI.”

Phifer writes:

-The enterprise WLAN market experienced sustained growth this year (according to stats from IDC).
- By mid-year, 802.11n deployments had accelerated, representing over 65 percent of AP revenue in 2Q10 (up from 56 percent in 1Q10 and 45 percent in 2Q09). (according to IDC stats)
- Enterprises are increasingly relying upon 802.11n as their dominant method of network access.

However, looking ahead, 802.11n isn’t the only hot topic. The controller-less WLAN discussion is expected to continue with enterprises “challenging centralized architectures due to behavioral shifts in network use.”

Topping the list of controller-based WLAN concerns causing enterprises to rethink their wireless network architectures in favor of a distributed solution:

- controller scalability
- throughput
- single points of failure
- the desire to optimize traffic flows

Another hot topic started in 2010 and expected to carry into the New Year: Cloud-based management.

Quoting Aerohive’s Chief Wi-Fi Architect Devin Akin, as well as colleague and analyst Craig Mathias, Phifer writes that management is heading into the cloud, “as computing and network industries embrace virtualization and look for new ways to exploit it.”

While it’s nice to see Aerohive placed prominently in a year-in-review piece, Phifer isn’t the only contributor to include mention of Aerohive in positive articles of late.

In a recent Network Computing article (Aerohive Makes Fat Wireless Phat), Lee Badman writes, “[Aerohive] is garnering all sorts of recognition among analysts, who love to use terms like “cool,” “innovative” and “hot” when describing the company and product set. In a nutshell, Aerohive combines the good of legacy autonomous access points with the benefits of central management and coordinated control, to create a solution that eliminates controllers while still competing with controller-based solutions.”

The problem that Aerohive has solved with its distributed wireless network solution?

Writes Badman, “Controllers can be extremely costly single points of failure, and their occasional buggyness can create tremendous administrative burdens when things go wrong.”

After a nod to Aerohive’s Akin, and a brief description of our architecture, Badman throws down one last optimistic statement about Aerohive’s place in a very competitive space.

“Aerohive claims feature parity with the big guys, from QoS to security to spectrum management, all without the controller layer required. As the admin of a large controller-based network, I hope that Aerohive’s approach takes root and spreads to other vendors. I’d gladly support big-boned access points again if they could deliver the contemporary WLAN experience without that layer of controller fat in the middle.”

We’re keeping our eye out for more past and forward looking articles… and continued coverage of 802.11n, cloud management, the controller-less vs. controller-based WLAN architecture debate, and other technology issues that are important to Aerohive.