Why Meru?

Why Do Customers Love Meru? Why Do Competitors Hate Meru?

Interference Mitigation

The Rhetoric

Meru's single channel architecture creates a single interference domain. The entire network and every client must move to a different channel whenever interference is detected.

Our Response

Interference affects all wireless networks. The difference is that, unlike competitors', Meru APs don't cause interference with each other. Thanks to Meru's Air Traffic Control technology, each AP instead augments its neighbors, boosting performance by increasing the average signal quality everywhere, smoothing out the rough patches in RF and enabling seamless handoffs across access points. An entire network of Meru APs can be tuned to the same channel, with strong gains in performance, whereas competitors must set adjacent APs to different non-overlapping channels and lower power to avoid destroying performance.

Furthermore, there is no single interference domain in a Meru system.  Each access point coordinates its activity through the Air Traffic Control architecture.  What happens to one part of the network is contained locally, and does not affect the remainder of the network.  The same is not true of microcell-based networks.

The channel layering architecture leaves more channels free to use in case of interference. Switching the network to a new channel is a simple matter with Meru's automated management, but it can be avoided by using multi-radio APs that keep several Virtual Cells running at once, one on each channel.  Microcell networks don't have either of these options. The only way that they can deal with interference is to reduce their data rate by shifting clients over to more distant access points, whose power levels cannot recreate the same signal quality, or to cause rippling reconfigurations as parts of the network having nothing to do with the interference are forced to change channels to keep the microcell channel plan intact.

The Reality

"Meru's single channel approach not only made the network much easier to deploy, but had better signal coverage and overall throughput, and could support more concurrent users than other vendors. If you make a mistake, you don't have do re-do all your channel planning."
– Senior network engineer, University of Miami

"The higher capacity, faster data rates, and increased ranges provided by Meru Networks' 802.11n equipment will enable more people to utilize the university's expanded wireless network,"
– CIO, Wayne State University

"Where wireless used to be seen as inferior in terms of reliability and security, two years of experience with our Meru wireless LAN shows it to be just as dependable as our wired network."
– Senior network systems analyst, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center