Wireless upgrade: Lighting manufacturer gets better throughput, reliability with “cooperative” WLAN
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 2/6/2008 12:14:00 PM
Acuity Brands Lighting, one of the world's largest lighting manufacturers, has installed cooperative control wireless LAN equipment from Aerohive Networks to replace an existing network of autonomous access points. The Acuity Brands Lighting wireless network supports mission-critical applications, including the company's ERP system, and comprises hundreds of wireless LAN access points distributed among 24 geographically dispersed facilities.
Acuity Brands Lighting chose to replace its existing network of autonomous access points because the network's lack of centralized management had created an overwhelming maintenance task and because the network did not provide the seamless roaming capability required for the company's planned voice-over-wireless-LAN (VoWLAN) initiative. In addition, Acuity Brands Lighting desired a network architecture that could easily support an upgrade to the 802.11n standard. The company also wanted a solution that would prove cost-effective.
"Our mission-critical applications demanded high availability, reliability, and security from our wireless LAN," says Way Brunson, manager, technology intelligence, Acuity Brands Lighting. "Aerohive's controller-less architecture met these requirements at a cost that was significantly less than controller-based alternatives. Provisioning one or more controllers at each of our 24 facilities would simply have been cost-prohibitive."
The Aerohive cooperative control network eliminates the need for centralized wireless LAN controllers. Aerohive provided Acuity Brands Lighting with wireless mobility and enterprise-grade management, enabling administration of the entire wireless LAN from a single site. Aerohive's controller-less wireless LAN architecture is ideal for 802.11n networks, because it eliminates the need to deploy the expensive, high-capacity controllers that are required to handle the increased throughput of 802.11n.
Removing controllers from the network also eliminates the bandwidth bottlenecks, latency, and jitter that result from backhauling traffic through a controller. Resiliency is also increased when the single points of failure found in controller-based architectures are eliminated. Aerohive's stateful failover and dynamic mesh failover capabilities further enhance the network's resiliency.
"Aerohive access points are drop-in replacements for first-generation 'fat' access points,” says Sheen Khoury, executive VP sales and field operations, Aerohive. “There is no need to re-architect your network to support an overlay network and insert expensive WLAN controllers. There is no simpler or more cost-effective upgrade path for enterprises interested in 802.11n, voice-over-wireless-LAN, or enterprise-grade management, mobility, and security."
The Acuity Brands Lighting wireless LAN roadmap includes VoWLAN throughout the company as well as wireless mesh via 802.11n. Aerohive cooperative control wireless LAN equipment will be deployed enterprise-wide, from corporate offices to warehouses and distribution centers.
An in-depth case study of Acuity Brands Lighting's selection and deployment of the Aerohive solution is available at www.aerohive.com/solutions/casestudy.html.
