Devinator

Dear Grandma,

Since the last time I dropped by the farm for biscuits and honey you asked me what makes Aerohive so special and why I travel around the world yacking on and on about it.  I hope this letter helps you to understand that I’m not a loon.

What Our Competitors Do

Our competitors build a wireless networking system, half of which is a bit like Grandpa’s prized bull Apollo.  It’s a giant, powerful, hungry beast.  In Apollo’s case, it’s just grain mix and hay, but in our competitor’s case, it’s electricity, cooling, data center rack space, feature licenses, and on-going support costs.  This half is called a controller.

The other half of their system is a little like all those heifers that Grandpa brings around to breed with Apollo.  They’re not very smart, Apollo pretty much does all the work, and they’re not going to get much work done without Apollo.  This half is called controller-based Access Points.

Of course Apollo can only service so many heifers a day, and in the same way, our competitor’s controller can only service so many controller-based APs at a time.  So, when they need more heifers serviced, they have to have more Apollos. 

The third half of their system is kinda like Grandpa himself.  Imagine if Grandpa owned 5 or 10 Apollos, each of which was breeding 5 heifers per day.  That takes quite a bit of planning, coordination, and paperwork to keep up with, no?  What if you wanted a report?  What if you wanted to look something up about one of the heifers?  This system component is called a Wireless Network Management System or WNMS for short.  The WNMS manages the controllers in the same way that Grandpa manages Apollo.

What We Do

You know those honey beehives that you and Grandpa are so proud of?  Well those beehives function a lot like Aerohive’s technology.  In fact, the functioning of those hives is how Aerohive got its name.  Within a hive, there is no central point of control.  Each bee has and knows its job and cooperates with other bees within the hive to accomplish the hive’s mission.

Instead of being like Apollo and his heifers, Aerohive’s technology has our Access Points talk directly to each other in just the same way all of those bees cooperate directly with each other.  Our Access Points are really smart.  They just say, “howdy neighbor, what’s shakin”, and then have a conversation with each other as needed.  That’s pretty much that.  Of course, Grandpa still has to manage the hive, so Aerohive still has a WNMS like that of our competitors.

Each HiveAP, like each bee, may have a different role (or multiple roles in our case) within the hive.  In Aerohive’s wireless system, it means a HiveAP can simultaneously provide access, bridge, mesh, VPN, WIPS, and other types of services.  It’s like each HiveAP is a super bee! J  I hope that makes sense Grandma.  I know it’s not a perfect analogy and that those acronyms probably make you break out in hives (no pun intended of course). 

This beehive method of “Cooperative Control” is how Aerohive’s technology will revolutionize the entire market.  It has some amazing advantages over our competitor’s model.  I’ll tell you about that in my next letter.

Don’t worry, I’ll be around soon to scarf up more of those biscuits and honey. :)

Big love from your favorite high-tech grandson. 

Devinator