Deployment Guide 127
EXAMPLE 2: CREATING A HIVE
EXAMPLE 2: CREATING A HIVE
A hive is a group of HiveAPs that exchange information with each other to form a collaborative whole. Through
coordinated actions based on shared information, hive members can provide the following services:
• Consistent QoS (Quality of Service) policy enforcement across all hive members
• Coordinated and predictive wireless access control that provides seamless layer 2 and layer 3 roaming to
clients moving from one hive member to another (The members of a hive can be in the same subnet or
different subnets, allowing clients to roam across subnet boundaries.)
• Dynamic best-path routing for optimized data forwarding and network path redundancy
• Automatic radio frequency and power selection for wireless mesh and access radios
• Tunneling of client traffic from one hive member to another, such as the tunneling of guest traffic from a
HiveAP in the internal network to another HiveAP in the corporate DMZ
Hive members use WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access with a preshared key) to exchange keys and secure wireless hive
communications. To authenticate and encrypt wireless hive communications, hive members use open authentication
and CCMP (AES) encryption. CCMP is a rough acronym for "Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message
Authentication Code Protocol" that makes use of AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). This is very similar to the
security provided by the SSID in the preceding example.
In this example, you define a hive and name it "hive-test1". Later, in "Example 3: Creating a WLAN Policy" on
page 128, you assign the hive to a WLAN policy, which in turn, you assign to HiveAP devices in "Example 5: Assigning
the Configuration to HiveAPs" on page 135.
Click Configuration > Advanced Configuration > Hives > New, enter the following, leave the other options at their
default settings, and then click Save:
Hive: hive1-test (You cannot include spaces in the name of a hive.)
Description: Test hive for learning how to use the GUI; remove later
As was done in the previous example, this note and the name "hive1-test" are intended to act as
reminders to replace this configuration later with a hive name that you really intend to use.
Modify Encryption Protection: (select)
Automatically generate password: (select)
The password is what hive members use when authenticating themselves to each other over the
wireless backhaul link using WPA-PSK CCMP (AES). As an admin, you never need to see or know what
this string is; therefore, using the automatic password generation method saves you the trouble of
inventing a long—up to 63 characters—and random alphanumeric string.
Optional Settings: Leave the optional settings as they are by default. For information about these settings, and
about any setting in the GUI for that matter, see the HiveManager online Help system.
Note:
A WLAN policy is different from a hive. Whereas the members of a WLAN policy share a set of policy-based
configurations, the members of a hive communicate with each other and coordinate their activities as access
points. WLAN policy members share configurations. Hive members work together collaboratively.
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