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Ohio's Cedarville University Chooses Meru Networks as It Upgrades Wireless LAN to High-Performance 802.11n
SUNNYVALE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Cedarville University in southwestern Ohio has selected Meru Networks' virtual cell wireless technology to upgrade its campus-wide wireless network to the new high-performance IEEE 802.11n standard, which offers performance of up to five times that of previous 802.11a/b/g standards.
The network currently provides Cedarville's faculty, staff and 3,000 students with wireless access to the Internet, email, research materials and administrative functions such as class registration. It will support future network growth and new applications such as wireless telephony (voice-over-Wi-Fi) for school security, facilities and other personnel.
Approximately 90 of the university's 500 wireless access points have already been upgraded to 802.11n in several buildings, including the newly built Center for Biblical and Theological Studies, which houses multimedia and computer labs, lecture halls, classrooms, and offices. The remaining 30 buildings on Cedarville's 400-acre campus will be upgraded over the next several years.
"With most of our students bringing their own laptops to campus nowadays, there's a built-in expectation that they'll have wireless everywhere - students hardly know anymore what it means to plug a laptop into a port in their rooms," said Nathan P. Hay, network engineer for Cedarville's Computer Services department. "In the academic buildings, wireless helps us in addressing the demand for temporary high-density setups. If a special event at the student center requires short-term use of 15 computers, it's a lot less work and time providing laptops connected to the wireless LAN than PCs on a traditional wired LAN."
Cedarville first deployed a Meru wireless network in 2006, first in academic buildings and later in student residences. Last year students began arriving on campus with new-generation laptops supporting 802.11n. Support for the 11n standard became a key component of the university's long-term wireless plan to provide ubiquitous connectivity with the best possible performance. Before starting the 11n upgrade, Hay decided to "recheck the wireless landscape," and evaluated 11n products from multiple vendors.
Meru Remains Top Choice: Use APs at Full Power Without Channel Interference Worries
"The reasons we chose Meru two years ago were the reasons we still liked them in this year's review," Hay said. "Meru's virtual cell architecture lets you put all the access points on one channel and turn the power up without worrying about radio interference. That's a huge benefit, especially in older residential buildings where many of the walls are concrete block construction and we need full power to get in-room coverage from APs mounted in the hallways. The other vendors we tested all use a micro cell approach that forces you to constantly adjust power up and down to avoid interference. The Meru single-channel technology also eliminates channel planning - I looked at the blueprints and just eyeballed for AP placement to get full coverage. And once an AP is configured and mounted, there's not much to do except let it run. Since I'm a wireless department of one, that's a big help."
Meru virtual cell technology eliminates the disruptive AP-to-AP "handoffs" that occur in other wireless systems when users roam. Hay said will this be a major advantage in the future when Cedarville deploys a voice-over-Wi-Fi system to replace the two-way radio system that computer technicians, campus safety and custodial personnel currently use to communicate. "Today, when someone talks on the radio, anyone else with a university radio - in fact, anyone with a radio anywhere in the region - can hear them. By virtue of its one-to-one nature, the Wi-Fi-based voice system will be inherently more secure."
Dual-Radio Access Points Accommodate Old and New Devices
For its 802.11n network the university uses Meru's AP320 access points, which maximize flexibility by providing dual radios and backward compatibility with 802.11a/b/g networks. "About 30 percent of students' client devices now operate in the 5-GHz range," Hay said. "The rest are still in the 2.4-GHz range, and we didn't want to abandon them prematurely. With the AP320, we can serve everyone by dedicating one radio to 802.11a/n at 5 GHz, and the other to 802.11b/g/n at 2.4 GHz." The Cedarville deployment has also upgraded to Meru's high-end modular MC5000 controller, which supports up to 1,000 APs and delivers intelligent contention management for high-density wireless environments.
About Cedarville University
Founded in 1887 and home to 3,000 Christian students, Cedarville is an accredited, Christ-centered, Baptist university of arts, sciences, professional, and graduate programs. Cedarville is located east of Dayton in southwestern Ohio on a beautiful 400-acre campus. For more information, visit http://www.cedarville.edu.
About Meru Networks
Meru Networks develops and markets wireless infrastructure solutions that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise. Its industry-leading innovations deliver pervasive, wireless service fidelity for business-critical applications to major Fortune 500 enterprises, universities, healthcare organizations and local, state and federal government agencies. Meru's award-winning Air Traffic Control technology brings the benefits of the cellular world to the wireless LAN environment, and its WLAN System is the only solution on the market that delivers predictable bandwidth and over-the-air quality of service with the reliability, scalability and security necessary to deliver converged voice and data services over a single WLAN infrastructure. Founded in 2002, Meru is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. For more information, visit www.merunetworks.com or call (408) 215-5300.
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