New Wi-Fi Access Points Tailored For The iPhone Age

Aerohive, which makes cloud-based Wi-Fi and routing systems, has responded to the rise of gadgets such as smartphones and tablets with new access points that improve sensitivity and decrease congestion.

The company on Tuesday launched two indoor access points, the HiveAP 330 and 350, and an outdoor access point, the HiveAP170. The devices are 30 percent smaller and 50 percent faster than previous units in the same range.

Reduced congestion

The 330 and 350 have radios that improve receive sensitivity by 5dBs, according to Aerohive. They run in the 5GHz and 2.4GHz ranges, allowing smartphones to run through the 2.4GHz channel, with laptops and tablets running in the 5GHz channel. That reduces congestion and ensures each device gets a better data rate, Aerohive said.

“With the acceptance of consumer smartphones and tablets into the enterprise APs must be able to compensate for the lower transmit power of these devices,” said Adam Conway, Aerohive vice president of product management, in a statement. “Aerohive specifically built the HiveAP 330 and HiveAP 350 to be able to support these new clients along with laptops and other traditional enterprise Wi-Fi clients.”

The devices use Freescale dual-core processors, Aerohive said.

The HiveAP 170 is an outdoor access point designed to offer a lower-cost alternative to systems from vendors such as Cisco, Aerohive said.

The 170 can operate in temperatures from -40 to 55 Celsius and are simple to set up, making them suitable for a wide variety of organisations, according to the company.

Deployable ‘virtually anywhere’

“The HiveAP 170 also uses high power, high receive sensitivity radios and has a very robust environmental range and aggressive price point, allowing enterprises to affordably deploy outdoors virtually anywhere on Earth,” Aerohive stated.

All of the devices will be able to be upgraded to run as network routers so that companies can use them to run small networks, Aerohive said.

the APs are 802.11n-enabled, with the indoor units available now for $999 (£630) each. The HiveAP 170 will be available at the end of the third quarter, with pricing starting at $1,499.

Aerohive previously offered business wireless LANs managed from the cloud, and in January it expanded its offering by acquiring Pareto Networks, which offered cloud management for wired switches and routers.

Pareto started selling routers and VPN appliances managed from the cloud in June last year, and was quickly bought by Aerohive to extend the cloud-controlled LAN offering – and acquire patents relating to networks-as-a-service.