Florida’s University of Miami has chosen Meru Networks to supply a campus-wide wireless network based on the new-generation IEEE 802.11n draft 2.0 standard, which allows wireless access at speeds up to 300 megabits per second (Mbps). According to Meru Networks, it started deploying the WLAN network last month at the University’s Coral Gables, Fla., campus. And is slated for completion in April. When complete, it will will include 525 wireless access points (APs) and fully redundant controllers. Presently, some 100 APs are already in operation, said the supplier.

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This new generation wireless network will provide Internet access in classrooms, residences and outdoors for the University's more than 15,000 graduate and undergraduate students, as well as to some 10,000 faculty and staff. In addition, voice (VoIP) capability will also be added to the network in the coming months, said Meru Networks.

"We've had wireless networking in some form for the past seven years, and chose the new .11n standard because we wanted our next investment to take us at least that far into the future," said Stewart Seruya, University of Miami's assistant vice president of telecommunications and IT security. "We learned about Meru from our colleagues at the [University of Miami] medical school, who were extremely satisfied with their network."

"Meru met our requirement for 100 percent backward-compatibility with the earlier 11a/b/g standards," said Diana Cortes, senior network engineer at the University. "And since we don't yet know which frequency will emerge as the most popular for 11n-equipped student laptops, we wanted our 11n products to operate in both the 2.4- and 5- GHz spectrum bands. Meru gave us absolute flexibility in all these areas and surpassed our expectations in terms of performance."

Cortes added that the key technology factor in the selection of Meru was the "virtual cell" architecture, which automatically selects a single channel for use campus-wide, layering additional channels only when more capacity is required. This contrasts with the "micro cell" approach used by most legacy WLANs, which assigns different channels to adjacent network cells, raising the potential for co-channel interference.

While the university expects a single access point to typically accommodate 20-30 users at a time, Meru equipment was recently shown to support as many as 150 students concurrently taking an online exam with just two access points.

www.merunetworks.com