People are saying...
“With all the Meru access points on one channel, there's none of the tedious channel planning that is such a headache with other vendors' networks. Network moves, adds and changes are simple.”
 
Ray Thach
Director of Technology
Oak Ridge School District
Featured Whitepapers
Wireless LAN Operations: From Reactive to Proactive
The State of 802.11n
Additional Whitepapers
Recommended Case Studies
University of Miami Medical Center
Pervasive WLAN connects classrooms, hospitals, clinics, laboratories & administrative offices.
State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook
22,000 students, 13,000 faculty and 123 buildings connect with Meru WLAN.
Additional Case Studies
 

I Need To Compare Meru WLAN Virtualization
& Legacy WLAN Solutions

There are many wireless LAN infrastructure vendors in business today. They all seem to make the same claims: They will make your life easier, enable mobility, keep end-users happy and save you money. However, since most of them use the same basic microcell architecture and offer the same features, they all run into the same problems – unreliable wireless connectivity, poor roaming, limited scalability and complex management.

Meru really is different. To see how, ask other wireless vendors each of these ten questions that cover the most critical aspects of wireless networking – from installation to upgrades to cost. Meru beats competitors in every one of them.

1. How many access points do I need?
A typical Meru deployment requires 30% fewer access points than a similar deployment from any competitor. This is because all Meru radios can transmit at their full power, whereas other systems require that each access point's power level be adjusted to avoid interference. Reducing power results in a complex microcell architecture in which cells continually shrink as new access points are added. In contrast, access points that are part of a Meru Virtual Cell augment rather than interfere with each other. All can transmit simultaneously at full power.
2. How much channel planning is required?
The same interference that forces access points to turn down their power also forces adjacent access points to use non-overlapping channels. Calculating the power level and channel setting of each access point is a complex process, requiring specialized software that often makes inaccurate predictions about coverage. Upgrading to 802.11n makes the whole process even worse, as multipath effects make the coverage of 802.11n access points inherently unpredictable. With Meru, no channel planning is needed. All radios in a Virtual Cell can use the same channel without interference.
3. What do moves and changes entail?
Microcell channel planning isn't a one-time activity. It needs to be repeated every time an access point is added to a network or moved, because a new access point causes more interference that neighbors must retune to avoid. Even moving a cabinet around can change the RF coverage available to wireless clients and potentially create a coverage hole. With Meru, adding new access points to fill coverage holes or extend coverage to new areas is as simple as changing a lightbulb. Each new access point uses the same channel and transmits at the same maximum power as every other access point within the Virtual Cell.
4. How long is the roaming latency?
Microcell systems force clients to decide for themselves which access point they should connect to. The client must constantly scan each channel, then try to guess when it should disconnect from one access point and connect to another. This often causes noticeable delays, especially in voice networks, and can even sever a connection completely. Meru avoids the problem by virtualizing the link. Clients remain connected to the same Virtual Port wherever they move in the network, with zero handoff latency.
5. How great a bandwidth density can the network scale to?
With Meru, bandwidth scales linearly as new radios are added. Each new radio can service a different Virtual Cell on a different radio channel, boosting the network to support higher user densities or new applications. Microcell networks don't scale so well, as much of the available spectrum is already consumed with mitigating interference. At 2.4 GHz., this makes Meru the only vendor able to support the full 40 MHz. channels without co-channel interference. At 5 GHz., a Meru network can scale almost without limit, with multiple network segments layered in the same physical space.
6. How good do VoIP calls sound?
Every vendor claims to offer the highest quality-of-service for VoIP traffic, but most fall short of toll-quality when their sound quality is measured objectively. In independent tests by Novarum, the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of VoIP devices on a Meru network was 4.38 – greater than the 4.0 usually considered toll quality. For comparison, cell phones tend to score between 3.0 and 4.0, while Meru's two largest competitors scored below 3.0 on the same tests.
7. How predictable is the network's performance?
Vendors love to promote their maximum data rates, minimum roaming times or best MOS scores. But the worst cases are often more important, as they represent the problems that users will notice. Meru's Virtual Port makes performance consistent and controllable, eliminating contention for access to the medium. Each packet at a given quality-of-service level is given equal treatment, making the standard deviation in most performance metrics less than 10%. The result is low jitter as well as low latency.
8. Do slower clients drag down 802.11n performance?
Most wireless access points are like Ethernet hubs. Clients contend for access randomly, with no guarantees that any will be able to transmit a packet. Once they do, each is allowed to send roughly the same amount of data – a serious problem when 802.11n needs to coexist with legacy clients, as slower devices take longer to transmit the same number of bytes. The slowest client ends up dominating the network, wasting much of the investment in 802.11n infrastructure. Meru prevents this with airtime fairness, giving each client an equal share of the network's time. Each client can transmit at it's own maximum speed during that time. Data rates are negotiated individually as in an Ethernet switch.
9. Where is the network secured?
Like most other enterprise vendors, Meru includes WPA and WPA2 Enterprise security that encrypts all traffic over the air and requires strong authentication. A widely supported standard, this makes wireless networks stronger at the network layer than most wired networks. But Meru does not rely on this alone. It also offers true physical layer security as an additional layer of defense. By preventing radio signals from particular networks from crossing a physical perimeter, physical layer security can do for 802.11 what walls, gates and security guards do for wired Ethernet.
10. Can access points monitor the network while serving voice traffic?
Most enterprise wireless LAN vendors include some kind of security and management scanning, with access points able to double as sensors that detect rogues or intruders. However, neither of Meru's two largest competitors can do both at the same time: Their products must act as either access points or sensors. This is a severe problem with VoIP and other real-time traffic, because voice packets must be sent so frequently that an access point does not have time to switch to and from sensor mode between transmissions. Meru is different, with access points able to scan for threats while serving voice clients.