Aruba AirWave - Wireless Field Day 4 #WFD4

The WFD#4 delegates were excited to have Aruba participate in WFD4. If you missed the presentation, no worries the entire presentation was recorded and can be viewed at the below link. 

http://techfieldday.com/appearance/aruba-networks-presents-at-wireless-field-day-4/

I was one of the delegates. I walked away with a better appreciation of Aruba's management platform called AirWave. AirWave was an acquisition by Aruba back in 2008. You can read more about the purchase by viewing the below link. The value proposition for non Aruba infrastructure folks is AirWave’s vendor neutrality. Aruba calls it the multivendor management approach. Allowing real time visibility into wired and wireless infrastructures regardless of vendor gear.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/010908-aruba-buys-airwave.html  

The location tracking caught my attention. Its a very inexpensive solution which allows mobile client tracking without the use of expensive boxes or licenses *cough* Cisco MSE *cough*. Another take away is the open XML API. Allowing for integration into other applications allowing you to port the location data. 

AirWave allows for wired switch monitoring. As a WiFi engineer who focuses primarily on WiFi, we all know that 802.11 frames will eventually hit the wired switch fabric. Having one software solution to monitor both my wireless and my wired switches is very appealing. It allows the WiFi engineer the ability to interact with just one console, instead of pulling in data from different sources, which is always a pain. 

Airwave also supports rouge ap detection, proactive alerts, historical reporting, client troubleshooting, floor plan maps and much much more. 

You can learn more about Aruba AirWave here:

http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/management-security-software-2/airwave/