Wireless Management

Provider of 802.11n wireless networking Meru Networks (News - Alert) has announced the availability of a wireless controller, the MC6000; a BYOD-ready access point, the AP332; and the 802.11ac Investment Protection Plan that protects wireless infrastructure investments as the current standard moves to 802.11ac.

Craig Mathias, a principal Farpoint Group (News - Alert), a wireless and mobile advisory firm, noted that the rapidly-increasing numbers of mobile users, devices, and applications on campuses and in enterprises are correspondingly driving demand for bandwidth expansion on wireless LAN networks.

“Meru’s announcement is a powerful indication that capacity must be increased across the board - user productivity and organizational mission now depend upon reliable, secure, and high-performance wireless connectivity,” Mathias said.

Touted as the latest advancements in Meru wireless innovation, the new wireless products are engineered to address the increasing network requirements of BYOD. In addition for resource stretched IT departments, these new products are expected to maintain choice and control of both wireless and wired network infrastructure.

Powered by System Director, the Meru MC6000 ultra-high capacity 802.11ac ready controller is designed to serve 5,000+ access points and 50,000+ users with 200 Gbps wireless capacity. System Director is a virtualized wireless LAN operating system.

Company officials said that they have developed the new controller to give IT executives the ability to choose network components and control network operations without compromising capacity, performance, scalability or security.

The Meru AP332 access point is the three-stream 802.11n access point that is designed to meet the capacity needs of dense Wi-Fi and high multimedia usage environments. Company officials said that it delivers up to 50 percent higher capacity than two stream dual-radio access points.

Manish Rai, vice president of product and solutions marketing at Meru, said that Meru’s AP332 with its unique RF virtualization technology can deliver nearly twice the capacity of traditional multi-channel installations with same number of access points in dense environments such as lecture halls, conference rooms, stadiums and enterprise campuses.

 “Meru with its RF virtualization technology, virtualized controllers and market leading BYOD on-boarding solution - Identity Manager - delivers flexibility at access, control and policy layers needed to put the control and choice back in the hands of the IT department,” Rai said.

Last month, Farmington Municipal School District in New Mexico selected Meru’s Wi-Fi networks for a district-wide wireless LAN for numerous students, teachers and staff in over 18 schools.