Wifi Revolution

Farmington Municipal School District has installed Meru Networks (News - Alert) wireless LANs in four middle schools. This follows an eLearning initiative which has been undertaken to provide one laptop per student. Meru Networks deployment will be extended district-wise to include high schools and elementary schools.

 

The installation is that of a Meru solution based on IEEE (News - Alert) 802.11n, which is a high-performance version of the Wi-Fi standard forming part of the 11n support in the Apple MacBook laptop computers given to the students. The Meru 802.11n access points employed here will support the legacy 802.11a/b/g standards used by older client devices.

 

The installation was completed after tests conducted in August and the district distributed 2,000 laptops to the sixth, seventh and eighth graders. Even during the registration process, approximately 75 computers were found to be connected to the network.

 

“Without the Meru network we would not have been able to effectively distribute large numbers of laptops so quickly,” said Charles Thacker, chief technology officer for Farmington Municipal Schools. “Users were joining and leaving the network throughout the four-hour distribution process, and we had no connectivity issues at all.”

 

Meru Networks was selected after comprehensive evaluation of WLAN solutions by simulating a high-density classroom-like environment. Participant vendors configured their own equipment for maximum effectiveness.

 

“Meru’s ability to put all traffic on a single channel avoids the co-channel interference and we can layer channels to increase capacity if needed. Their virtual cell capability eliminates handoff issues, and an airtime fairness feature keeps slower clients from dragging down the connection speed of faster ones, so it’s never a problem to have a mix of 11b, g and n users on the same network,” explained Thacker.

 

Harmonix Technologies, a Meru reseller partner, helped the district undertake WLAN testing and deployment. Jack Vigil, CEO of Harmonix, said that other wireless vendors will not be able to handle the high-density user environment seen in Farmington school as they use micro cell approach. Meru on the other hand uses virtual cell approach which can turn up the RF signals to high with no interference issues.

 

In the coming years, Farmington Municipal Schools will expand the Meru WLAN network to administrative offices followed by the three high schools and 10 elementary schools.

 

Meru’s single channel approach to wireless coverage reduces interference as it selects one channel for enterprise-wide use and only layers more channels when capacity increase is expected. As all the access points (APs) occupy the same channel in a single “virtual cell” the network will choose the AP that can offer the highest data rate. The wireless connections are most reliable and are maximized irrespective of client. Call handoffs are eliminated when clients are roaming leading to zero-latency.

 

Meru Networks develops and markets wireless infrastructure solutions. Its wireless service is suitable for business-critical applications and required by large enterprises, universities, healthcare organizations and government agencies. Meru’s Air Traffic Control technology offers cellular world benefits to the WLAN environment.

 

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