Kelley Seaman introduced Tanaza at Wireless Field Day 3, then the founder of Tanaza Sebastiano Bertani explained his software solution to the problem of having to manage multiple consumer grade access points in either a centralized or distributed deployment. Tanaza is a vendor agnostic cloud management for 'good enough' wireless. They will soon be growing from supporting mid-tier to enterprise class access points. In Q4 2014 Tanaza will begin supporting switching hardware.
There are options for managing access points with Tanaza. Some access points can use their original firmware, others will run Tanaza firmware instead. The access point/software connects to the Tanaza engine (engine.tanaza.com), and from here will have a configuration pushed or it, or configuration information from the AP can be retrieved.
The Tanaza backend UI (https://ajax.tanaza.com) sends information through ajax requests to the Tanaza web interface (https://cloud.tanaza.com). The user front-end accesses static resources (css, javascript, images, html).
Tanaza requires a Tanaza host per subnet. The Tanaza agent is available for Windows and Mac and there is no need for VPNs, public IPs or DynDNS. The Tanaza agent is written in C and is based on the OpenWrt code. I'm most familiar with using dd-wrt (a variant of OpenWrt) to tweak the Linksys WRT54G access point to perform better than the code it shipped with.
I was not familiar with Tanaza prior to attending Wireless Field Day 3. It was very interesting to hear their solution presented, since it is something I wouldn't otherwise have encountered. I can see where Tanaza could be used to manage a diverse deployment of off the shelf access points and do so by using a single web interface. Tanaza is a slick solution to overcome the problem of how to manage the different wireless hardware you'd find in small shops (restaurants, laundromats, schools).
Tanaza was a sponsor of Wireless Field Day 3. As such, they were responsible for covering a portion of my travel and lodging expenses while attending Wireless Field Day 3. They did not ask for, nor where they promised any kind of consideration in the writing of this review/analysis. The opinions and analysis provided within are my own and any errors or omissions are mine and mine alone.
Video is pretty helpful!
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