The Solutions
That is when the HSBA turned to Brendan Burroughs at One World WiFi, a local wireless network integrator with deep knowledge of municipal deployments, who had recently completed an outdoor deployment at neighboring Central Square using Aerohive solutions. Brendan conducted an analysis of the current network and mapped out a new design, taking into account many variables of the outdoor space, such as the height of buildings and layout of the streets, problematic foliage in the park, as well as the need to deploy a solution able to withstand the harsh New England winters. Harvard Square covers 44 acres, one million square feet of space and is home to 360 business locations so the network needed to be designed for today and any expansion in the future.
As Denise Jillson of the HSBA states, “Aerohive proved to deliver the best connectivity and performance among all the providers we considered. Ensuring a robust network was of utmost importance, and coupled with its good price point, no single points of failure and stellar customer service, Aerohive was clearly the best solution for Harvard Square.”
Harvard Square chose Aerohive’s AP170 and AP350 access points (APs) for durability and reliability. The AP170 is an enterprisegrade, high performance MIMO solution, specially designed for outdoor high-bandwidth–demand wireless deployments, and able to handle not only a influx of users, but the harsh climate as well. The AP350 provides the best range among Aerohive APs and is designed for high bandwidth demand. The band steering features built into the firmware are very important to Harvard Square and municipal networks in particular, urging users to move to 5GHz channels whenever possible, ensuring optimal network performance and efficiency.
In addition to the APs, One World WiFi uses Aerohive’s HiveManager Online, part of its cloud services platform, to administer and monitor the network. HiveManager offers realtime topology, performance and client information to simplify troubleshooting, capacity planning and security remediation of networks. Because it is not essential to the flow of traffic, losing connectivity to HiveManager will not affect any control or data forwarding features of the Harvard Square network.
As Brendan Burroughs explains, “Aerohive’s HiveManager Online solution means I don’t need additional employees to monitor a network, and with cloud-managed solutions, I’m able to grow my business because I can administer networks remotely, prioritizing changes based on feedback from HiveManager Online, and making tweaks seamlessly and without complexity from anywhere in the world.”
The Results
As part of the Wi-Fi upgrade in the Square, the HSBA partnered with Google to help sponsor the rollout of the new solution. Users are directed to Google products and services such as Google+ and Play Store. Before the official rollout, members of the team tested the network, sat in the square, set up a Skype account and video conference, walking around the Square as they chatted.
Since the rollout, the HSBA has seen an increase in the number of unique visitors on the network, but most importantly witnessed flawless network performance and connectivity.
“Go to Harvard Square and you’ll see why we chose Aerohive. If you go to another municipal Wi-Fi deployment with different solutions you’ll see the difference – there’s no comparison for the end user. Aerohive just works better,” confirmed Brendan Burroughs, CEO of One World WiFi. “With minimal configuration and headache, along with excellent customer service, Aerohive is my top choice for municipal deployments.”
via WiFiNovation | Scoop.it
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