Disappointed with AeroHive

So I picked up a lot of Aerohive AP 120s from an IT recycler cheap. I was planning on using at least some of them at home, as from their product literature everywhere states that you can run them without an controller... and even more you can group them into "hives" so they can share information and essentially have one AP act as a controller called Aerohive’s Cooperative Control Architecture. They also mention that There is a AeroHive HiveManager NMS that is more centralized and supports more features.

Well, come to find out this feature of both locally managing them as well putting them in "hives" was removed. they can no longer be autonomous APs. They require there controller HiveManager either as a VM deployment, on-site appliance or SaaS. They have removed those features in a firmware update now all you can do from the local AP is set the Network settings (DHCP or Static IP) and make a few settings for communicating with the HiveManager.

They are still actively supporting this AP until 2018. and the AP only stopped being sold last year but these changes were made well before then. I'm curious as to why none of their product descriptions or literature was updated to reflect this major change? Bait and switch much? (granted I didn't buy from them so there's nothing I can do about that.)

I've heard so many good things about Aerohive I wanted to try them out at home. But it looks like I will have to end up selling them off and just picking up some UniFi APs or something. I'm sad that I can't test them but also very disappointed that a company would make a major change like that with no notice. Maybe I can convince them to give me a free copy of the HiveManager VM to use at home since this is for home/educational use and because they failed to update their materials. That's seems highly unlikely though.

Aerohive will probably now be on my companies to avoid list as you can't trust their product descriptions and details.

http://www.aerohive.com/pdfs/Aerohive-Datasheet-AP120.pdf

Here is a screenshot of the local AP options:

It looks like the 3.x firmware was the last version to have the HiveUI which was the interface to control it from its embedded UI and manage all the other APs from it too. I guess they wanted the additional money from selling separate licenses to a controller appliance so they removed it.

scottalanmiller

Ouch, doesn't sound like a very good company if they are advertising key features that they removed!

how many APs? how much you want for em? which APs are they?

@scottalanmiller said:

Ouch, doesn't sound like a very good company if they are advertising key features that they removed!

Yeah. I know. A sales person give me a call. They would like to sell me the SaaS version of the controller which is pricey alone but to even do that they want the APs on the latest firmware and require you to purchase a support contract for all APs connected to the controller.

I guess I will sell the 11-12 of them I have on ebay and try to get enough out of them to get a Ubiquiti Unifi AC then I can have gigabit wifi.

scottalanmiller

That they have SaaS to sell is probably why they removed the functionality. Bait and switch, quite literally

Downgrade the firmware?

I like Ubiquiti Networks UniFi AP

@Aaron-Studer said:

Downgrade the firmware?

The 3.x version is no longer available. But, firmware upgrades require a support contract but you have to make a special request for anything other than the current version and they only honor them if a bug is found from the information I found.

scottalanmiller

Not sounding like a healthy vendor.

@scottalanmiller said:

Not sounding like a healthy vendor.

Worse than Cisco. At least I can run Cisco Aironets in autonomous mode.

scottalanmiller

More like Meraki, if you don't pay the annual fee, they are bricks.

@scottalanmiller said:

More like Meraki, if you don't pay the annual fee, they are bricks.

There the same company now!

@Aaron-Studer said:

@scottalanmiller said:

More like Meraki, if you don't pay the annual fee, they are bricks.

There the same company now!

But very separate. Just owned by cisco.

scottalanmiller

@thecreativeone91 said:

But very separate. Just owned by cisco.

Sort of. Like Linksys, their reputations are tied. It's one company.

@scottalanmiller said:

@thecreativeone91 said:

But very separate. Just owned by cisco.

Sort of. Like Linksys, their reputations are tied. It's one company.

Linksys is belkin now. But, I think there reputations are really only tied by people who think that because Cisco is good product that linksys would be.. and were sorely disappointed. I think most professionals realize the difference.

@Hubtech said:

how many APs? how much you want for em? which APs are they?

They are the AP 120's. I'm going to try to get $300 out of the whole lot of them.

scottalanmiller

@thecreativeone91 said:

Linksys is belkin now. But, I think there reputations are really only tied by people who think that because Cisco is good product that linksys would be.. and were sorely disappointed. I think most professionals realize the difference.

Now, but while they were internal Cisco slapped the Cisco brand on all of it and merged lines so that it was all one and the same.

I think most professionals realize that once Cisco is claiming it is all Cisco and can leverage "oh, that's a Linksys product" anytime that they want as an excuse that it is Cisco as a whole that is the problem. Once you have to be "in the know" to know which products work and which don't and you can't trust a vendor to make good products or stand behind them, the problem is the vendor, not the products.

They did have a sales rep reach out and offer a free*** (tons of conditions) ap that could be managed. Notice while They still aren't calling it a controller as the traffic doesn't originate through the device/vm/SaaS it is required for configuring them so I'm not sure how that makes them unique now. So it's obvious they just removed this feature to get more money out of people. I'd think they'd realize they are loosing more money by not giving me a free VM copy of it as at this point I would never consider them for any enterprise wi-fi project and will not have an opportunity to test it to make up for this bad experience now.

The biggest differentiator between Aerohive and our competitors is our ability to operate without a controller. Our controller-less architecture provides a cost effective solution with no single point of failure or bottleneck. By removing the controller we have developed an architecture around a centralized management system, that can be hosted either in the cloud or on premise, while managing your networks policies and configurations at the edge.

In order to qualify for the Access Point, it’s simple:

Schedule an introductory webinar with territory rep
Must be an IT professional with a valid corporate email address (i.e. Personal emails such as Gmail and Yahoo are disqualified from this offer)
Resellers, partners, consultants, and distributors do not qualify for this offer.
Company must have a wireless project planned and budgeted in the next 12 months with 5 or more APs
Let me know when you have some time on your calendar to speak further about what Aerohive has to offer

@scottalanmiller said:

I think most professionals realize that once Cisco is claiming it is all Cisco and can leverage "oh, that's a Linksys product"

The looks generally give it away.

I have a Unifi AC on the way to me now!!!! Guess I'll off load these on ebay. Thanks to the supplier who wishes to remain nameless who decided to send me a new unit from Ubiquiti to they have better service than Aerohive. The Power of posting a ML post on Twitter haha.