| 9/24/09 - Aerohive Networks announced
that the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon
Services has deployed broadband wireless equipment from Aerohive and Juniper Networks to
provide a secure, enterprise-wide 802.11n wireless LAN solution to the
Department's 680 parole agents and staff. Employees of other government
agencies, including Federal Probation and Vocational Rehabilitation, and
law enforcement personnel will also access the network as guests.
The
Aerohive and Juniper equipment has been deployed at the Department's
central site in Columbia, and it will be extended to cover 53 additional
offices and 46 courtrooms around the state.
The Department required a wireless LAN that was scalable, reliable, secure,
and easy to manage. It chose an Aerohive solution over controller-based
alternatives because of the advantages that Aerohive's cooperative wireless
LAN architecture provides in these areas. Aerohive's cooperative
architecture requires no network controllers or overlay networks. Instead,
software in the Aerohive access points (HiveAPs) enables them to
self-organize into groups called hives. The result is a secure,
multi-service wireless LAN infrastructure that is able to support a vast
array of wireless devices, application types, and service levels, with
faster client performance, wire-like resilience, and lower capital and
operational costs.
Competing alternatives required tunneling back to a centralized controller
in Columbia, which would scale poorly, and also posed reliability and
availability issues. For example, if the central site went down, or the
link to any local office failed, the local LAN would also be down. In
addition, backhauling all network traffic to Columbia would degrade the
network's performance.
"I appreciated the vision of how the Aerohive access points functioned, the
intelligence they had, even when they were disconnected," said David
O'Berry, director, IT Systems and Services, South Carolina Department of
Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services. "Most other products I looked at
got pretty dumb when they lost connectivity with the controller. The
Aerohive model scaled very well. From a scalability and resiliency
perspective, I felt that Aerohive was the best choice."
The Department selected Aerohive as part of a comprehensive solution that
also included Juniper Networks Unified Access Control (UAC), Juniper's
dynamic, comprehensive solution for network access control (NAC). It
delivers granular access control that combines user identity, device
security state, and location information for session-specific access policy
by user. HiveAPs provide state-of-the-art security, with features
including 802.11i (WPA2), wireless IDS, 802.1X authentication, rogue
detection, integrated stateful firewall, and guest access control, as well
as integration with a broad range of directory systems. Together with
Juniper, Aerohive provides the Department with a best-in-class, shared
wireless environment that allows for secure employee mobility and
third-party network access.
"Because Juniper's UAC is based on open standards, it ensures
interoperability with Aerohive wireless LANs, providing a secure,
whole-enterprise wireless solution for the Department," said Rich Campagna,
senior product line manager, Access Solutions, Juniper Networks. "We are
pleased to provide the Department with greater visibility and management
capabilities, allowing for granular assessment of its various users across
a distributed environment, where they can securely and assuredly bring in
the necessary services to better serve the state and its citizens."
The Department used Aerohive's HiveManager network management system (NMS)
to provision the new HiveAPs. Its graphical user interface makes it easy
to establish and adjust wireless network settings and security policies,
eliminating the complexities associated with most wireless deployments.
When new HiveAPs are connected to the network, the HiveManager
automatically discovers them and transparently pushes configuration
settings and policies to them for a seamless plug-and-play installation.
HiveManager also provides monitoring capabilities through a single,
easy-to-use console.
"Highly distributed organizations like the South Carolina Department of
Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services benefit greatly from Aerohive's
cost-effective, controller-less branch office wireless LAN solutions," said
David Flynn, chief executive officer, Aerohive Networks. "Aerohive also
provides state-of-the-art wireless security and seamless integration with
best-in-class access control solutions, such as Juniper's UAC."
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