Networking & Wireless | News

Aerohive Intros New Gigabit Access Point

• By Leila Meyer
• 04/09/14

Aerohive Networks has introduced a new 802.11ac gigabit Wi-Fi access point (AP) that it's touting as an economical option for organizations that want to upgrade to to the standard but have been concerned about cost and power requirements.

According to Aerohive, the AP230 can provide high performance at an affordable price and is backward compatible with 802.11n networks.

802.11ac is the latest industry standard in wireless networking. It offers data rates exceeding one gigabit per second, greater capacity, improved radio frequency management and improved performance over the current standard of 802.11n.

The AP230 is part of Aerohive's controllerless architecture — called Cooperative Control architecture — so schools don't need to upgrade controllers on their existing wireless network to support 802.11ac. According to the company, the AP230 also uses Aerohive's distributed intelligence architecture that helps network administrators manage network traffic at the application level without causing problems with network performance.

St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Mississippi was a beta test site for the AP230. "We conducted a speed test of the new 802.11ac AP at our school library," said Kevin O'Malley, chief information officer of the school, in a prepared statement. "Students connecting to the 802.11ac were able to download a large file in less than seven minutes, as compared to 35 minutes for students using the 802.11n Wi-Fi cards. Those testing 802.11g cards weren't even able to spend the two hours necessary."

Key features of the AP230 include:

• 3x3, three-stream 802.11ac gigabit Wi-Fi;
• Full functionality with existing power over Ethernet (PoE) infrastructure;
• Aerohive Cooperative Control (controllerless) architecture; and
• Out-of-the-box application visibility and control.

The AP230 is available now starting at $799 US list. Further information can be found on Aerohive's site.