Which wireless network provider would you recommend?

[AlanD]

Whoever told you Meru is a big boy in the wireless space lied to you. Their single channel architecture is counter intuitive with modern wireless advancements and their marketshare is abysmal.

 

Meru at least did have a good foothold in the UK education market (maybe not in the world market, education or otherwise)...perhaps that is what was meant. This foothold was partly because it was pedalled by RM...and perhaps that is why it may not longer so successful (if it ever was). It was installed throughout Northern Ireland at one time....or pretty nearly.

 

Not sure I would have used the expression counter intuitive... you understand the restrictions of 2.4GHz - with its three non overlapping channels (and only 2 if you use a wider 40MHz channel) - which would normally require you to reduce the transmit power - and the fact that a strong signal to noise ration is required to get the high QAM rates which essentially requires you to turn the power up and have a lot more than 2 or 3 access points to cover an area....you then have the problem of co-channel interference...which Meru's system does its best to do away with..and was pretty good at it..the result was that it was extraordinarily effective using that band.

 

..but today - with 5GHz, a lot more channels, and much greater density (no longer just one trolley of laptops moved around...but devices in every classroom)...it no longer offers the benefits it once did because you need to be using all the channels to get the required throughput. Perhaps if you have most of your client devices capable of operating at 160MHz channel widths...in which case it may be capable to showing some gains. And just to stab them in the back - I'm not convinced that the current "ac" chip sets allow them to do things in the same way as you can't masquerade the MAC address of the APs so clients seamlessly roaming between APs is not so well done.

 

Now if they modelled their marketing like Unify...pile them high and sell them cheap...AND had a technical edge perhaps they would wipe the competition off the plate. There have been reports - in these forums - of some pretty unsuccessful Meru implementations...but that might not be the fault of the product....as indeed the best products can perform badly if poorly set up.

[SuperfluousAdjective]

Out of interest, why is it counter intuitive?

 

Their product was started to solve a specific problem that was prevalent in early stages of WiFi. With the advent of modern technology and protocols like 802.11r/k/v, etc it becomes less relevant and the architecture itself creates a bottleneck. Meru recognizes this which is why when they do deployments for high performance networks they turn off their single channel architecture and when they run their own benchmarks they use multiple channels.

 

Using the auto-rf channel assignment functionality of modern enterprise grade wireless systems will provide you better performance than a Meru single channel architecture. And if you're using Meru as a multiple channel architecture over their competition you've seriously purchased the wrong product for the task at hand...

Edited December 14, 2017 by SuperfluousAdjective

[SuperfluousAdjective]

There have been reports - in these forums - of some pretty unsuccessful Meru implementations...but that might not be the fault of the product....as indeed the best products can perform badly if poorly set up.

 

Their business model is to convince customers to improperly set up their wireless networks.. ignore surveys, ignore client density, ignore interference and just willy-nilly place APs anywhere you want on the same channel and like magic the laws of physics disappear. And if your performance sucks, or if your clients don't work with their wireless system because they break RFC standards it's not their fault.. simply wait for a firmware upgrade (if it comes) and add more APs while crossing your fingers that it'll work the next time. The benefits of adjusting NAV values on a single channel architecture only exist in low client density deployments, that's why Meru uses multiple channels for their benchmarks. But, in low client density deployments you don't need to mess with the RFC and WiFi in that way, modern wireless systems are more than capable of supporting the environment. However, if you need more performance or if you have a lot of interference, you're fubared on Meru's single channel deployments. At the end of the day they can't get around physics.

Edited December 14, 2017 by SuperfluousAdjective

[HTCPCP]

Pre Summer when I left Education, I was working in 5 schools and had been in 2 further schools until not long before when we did a reshuffle and swapped some techs around.

 

Secondary School (Main Site) - Meraki - 1600 kids, one device per pupil

Primary School 1 - Meraki - 200 or so kids

Primary School 2 - Unifi - 260 or so kids

Primary School 3 - Rukus - 160 kids

Primary School 4 - Juniper - 300 kids

 

Former school 1 - Meraki - 300 kids

Former school 2 - Unifi - 360 kids

 

For my time and troubleshooting issues - Meraki was far easier than the others, but did come in a bit more expensive. Similarly, the Meraki gear wasn't supported by the LA, but could be worked on from anywhere. The Unifi kit was LA installed, and the Rukus was installed by the head over the summer with no input, and the Juniper was a previous Support provider

 

We had a trial of the Meru kit a few years ago, and absolutely hated it. Poorly designed, and just didn't cut it. Well unless their own sales team couldn't set it up properly...

[DGardiner]

Aruba Instants all the way here.

 

the price rise since HP acquired them is a bit of a pain but I've never had a problem in 3-4 years!