Meru Networks:Current and Potential Customers pls read:11ac Trade Ups + new pricing

[mhowell]

 

I wanted to share this post with you all, in order to clarify what our team here in the UK & Ireland, and our channel partners, are doing with regards to helping customers move to the new 802.11ac standard.

My contact details are at the bottom of the post should anything not be clear, and you wish to ask us a question directly

 

Last year in the UK & Ireland, 620 new education customers joined the now over 4000 education customers being served by our qualified partners. Every school week, roughly 20 new education customers choose our technology, and we know over 23% of all secondary schools across UK & Ireland now use our technology. This we feel is a very large market share considering that we know a large proportion of secondary schools we visit haven’t done anything serious with their wireless yet.

 

In primaries, we are at 10% largely because we’ve been too high priced for primaries. Highly discounted bundles are now available for primary schools, the AP822 (dual band dual stream 11ac access point) generally being the most suitable AP for the primary sector.

 

Our partners are being instructed only to discuss 11ac options with new potential customers as we feel, given the very small price difference, 11ac will clearly last you longer, and provide better total cost of ownership. (11ac access points from Meru being the AP822, AP832 and AP122 series). After all 11n was ratified back in 2009, 11n products have been available since 2007, and device manufacturers are fast moving to deploying 11ac chipsets in new devices.

 

Clearly we have many customers out there who have Meru 11n networks, and many potential customers running other 11n technologies. Hence Meru have launched a campaign in the UK & Ireland to ensure that, if customers have the budget, and want to migrate to the latest 11ac standard with Meru, they can do so at prices that hopefully you will be surprised about (in a positive way)

 

Read / View more about Meru’s 11ac advantages here, pay particular attention to channel widths and the impact this has on throughput available:

802.11ac | Meru Networks

 

Meru UK & Ireland would encourage you to contact your original partner to discuss these migration and trade up options.

 

If you have inherited a Meru Network and don’t know who your original partner was, or have lost touch with them, hopefully not fallen out with them, then please email [email protected] and the team will help you get back on track

 

 

Some useful information below:

STEP ONE:

If you are running an MC500, MC1000, MC1500, MC3000 or MC4100, (not to be confused with 1550, 3200 & 4200) controller then you won’t be able to take advantage of 11ac access points, nor a number of new firmware features, the most useful in education being Service Control. Service Control essentially makes Apple deployments (or any other zero config protocol) far easier to manage. The chattiness and multicast nature of Bonjour becomes more and more network impacting the more IOS and Airprinter/Apple Tv’s you add to the network.

More information here: http://www.merunetworks.com/collateral/white-papers/wp-apple-bonjour-support-architecture-overview.pdf We've numerous high profile Apple sites running 1000+ ios devices with hundreds of Apple Tvs / Air Printers

 

There are trade in options for customers where we will allow you to purchase new licenses for the new controller free of charge (on a 1:1 basis for what you already had license wise) and transfer the support (if in date!) for free to a new controller (heavily discounted). If the support has lapsed on the old controller then new support needs to be purchased for the new controller which is not backdated.

The controller to migrate to would be either the 1550, 3200, 4200 depending on the size of your access point network / expected simultaneous client count. These controllers run Service Control (controller must be running 6.0 code and above) and will run all of our older 11n products (so upgrading the controller in readiness for 11ac does not make them redundant for current 11n access points)

Many customers / potential customers are unaware that all of our controllers can now be purchased as images that can be run on VMWARE which reduces the trade in cost further.

http://www.merunetworks.com/collateral/data-sheets/ds-virtual-mobility-wireless-lan-controllers-mc1550-mc3200-mc4200.pdf

 

Contact your partner or us for details.

 

STEP TWO

For customers that are running our current 1550, 3200 and 4200 (VMWare based or physical) controllers, then Service Control is already available but you need to be running 6.0 firmware and above.

Most of our customers who have already deployed 1550, 3200 and 4200 series controllers here in the UK & Ireland, are running with Ap1000 series , 301, 302, 310, 311, 320, 320i or 332 access points.

Depending on budget and where you are in the client device buying cycle, 11n access points may be perfectly sufficient for your current needs. We have literally thousands of Ap300, AP1000 series being returned to us from customers upgrading to the Ap822/AP832 and we are refurbishing and reselling these at discounted prices with full Meru warranty as if purchased new. Ideal for older customers who only need a few to fill out their network, expand some coverage in certain areas. Contact your partner or us for details.

 

Other customers, who are thinking about upgrading their curriculum owned devices, will find that the devices that they are looking to purchase have 11ac chipsets in them, and, budget permitting, may want to upgrade the access points to 11ac access points.

There are trade-up discount options available to purchase the Ap822 or AP832, through our qualified channel partners, for our current customers running the 11n range of Meru access points, and the same discounts are available for customers running 11n networks from most other vendors.

Please contact your Meru Channel Partner for details, or contact us directly on [email protected]

Please note we have seen some resellers purporting to be Meru partners when they are not. If you have any doubts about the suitability / relationship with Meru of a reseller then please contact us.

 

STEP 3

EZRF

Many of our education customers now have extremely complex networks, significant numbers of BYOD devices, with wireless being the principle means of connectivity.

Whilst System Director software on the controllers is perfectly sufficient to run an education network, some would say it is limited in terms of its historical reporting. EZRF Network Manager is Meru’s advanced Network Management software and is now well within the budgets of Secondary Schools.

More details on EZRF can be found here (runs on VMWARE or a Service Appliance) Network Manager | Meru Networks

For a school of up to 100 access points you should expect to pay around £2500 + VAT with three years support from a channel partner.

If you are running VMWARE we can happily set up a trial for you

 

BYOD

With increasing numbers of students’ own devices, the challenge is often how to “onboard” those devices and ensure students are connecting securely (802.1x) and that the network administrators know exactly who is doing what where and when. Meru Connect is our solution and becoming increasingly popular, as it operates over other wired and wireless networks, not just our own. Previously the product was priced out of the schools market, but now, through a bit of lobbying, we’ve managed to price this within the reach of secondary schools - at least we hope you think so

Meru Connect : Meru Connect | Meru Networks Meru Connect can be run on HYPERV, VMWARE or a Meru Service Appliance

Please contact your Meru Channel Partner for details, or contact us directly on [email protected] (please note we do not sell directly to education customers, always through our channel partners)

 

 

Some tips on 11ac and general wireless information no matter the brand

 

Many BYOD devices, eg student phones, tablets, already have 11ac chipsets in them

There are 4 key things to point out here.

1. 11ac is a 5Ghz technology. 5Ghz signals do not propagate as far as 2.4Ghz and so access point placement is critical. An old survey based on 2.4Ghz may not be up to scratch in today’s 11ac environment. Generally speaking, if one considers a teaching space as a classroom with 30 students, if you are using mobile devices extensively, then an access point per teaching space is required.

2. There are a number of rules of thumb we have come to use in the UK & Ireland based on the extensive school data we have, which applies to primary schools and to secondary schools. Obviously every school is designed differently, some being more open plan with more wireless friendly materials (think slightly less Aps), others being less wireless friendly with thick walls (think more Aps). If you are using mobile devices extensively, with 1:1 schemes, BYOD, devices being used everywhere all the time, you should expect, for a secondary school to deploy either:

Numbers of access points = Number of classrooms plus 20% or

Numbers of access points = The max pupil capacity of the school divided by 20, plus 20%

 

For a primary school, again if you are using mobile devices extensively, potentially using class sets of laptops/tablets in any classroom at any point in time, then a good rule of thumb is:

Numbers of access points = Number of classrooms PLUS 5… the PLUS 5 generally being one near the head’s office, one in the staff room, one in the gym, and one in administrative areas , and one in the library.

 

These rules of thumbs do not apply to more geographically dispersed independent schools with generally lower class sizes.

 

3. Many schools are now adding devices to their networks (previously designed for 2.4Ghz coverage) that prefer to connect on 5Ghz. Many schools may experience what they perceive to be “worse performance now we’ve introduced the tablets” but in fact the issue is linked to the fact the devices are connecting on 5Ghz not 2.4Ghz as the old laptops that you might have just replaced did. The solution to this problem is either deploy more access points to enable better 5Ghz coverage, or display the SSIDs only on 2.4Ghz which you’d like the tablets to use.

 

4. Look under the bonnet. Just like when buying a car, there’s always a Make … say Ford….. there’s a model… say Mondeo and in every car there’s an engine… In the wireless world we’d consider that the chipset. Just like 11n, there are huge variations in performance of wireless 11ac chipsets based upon the number of spatial streams that radio, or chipset, inside the device has. This has a huge impact on the speed and performance of the device.

 

Where you have control of what you are buying for the the school / college, you should ask your manufacturer exactly what 11ac chipset is in the device. (you can actually find this in device manager in a windows device, in other devices it is harder to find out).

Today, you should be looking for a dual band, dual stream 11ac chipset as a minimum. Take the exact chipset details you’ve been provided and then check them on the WIFI ALLIANCE website. Wi-Fi Alliance

Go to Product Finder | Wi-Fi Alliance

Click the Computers & Accessories Category, and search under INTERNAL ADAPTER. When I looked today, there are 1334 listed on the WIFI Alliance website……

Essentially you are looking to find the certificate for the adapter.

The Certificate will tell you:

Frequency bands: you are looking for 2.4 & 5Ghz.

Connectivity: you are looking for a,b,g,n,ac

Under the heading for Wi-Fi Certified ac: you are looking for

Tx2 tested Spatial Streams 5Ghz

 

Rx2 tested Spatial Streams 5Ghz

 

 

I hope the above information is useful, and you are welcome to contact me directly either on [email protected] which will go to the whole team, and the account manager for your region of the country will pick it up, or me personally Mark Howell, [email protected]

 

Views are my own and not necessarily those of my employer