Meru performance with lots of wireless devices

[captainbirdseye86]

Hey all;

 

We have quiet a large Meru network installation in our school which we had placed in about 6 months ago. We run a MC3000 controller between 21 stations. My question is whether anyone has had a significant meru network which they felt was able to cope with a very large amount of mobile devices connected to it. We are talking up to 600 wireless devices spread across the access point; with the access points being one access point per two classrooms.

 

Would you think in your experience that wireless at this usage level could cope? we are running N standard on one channel.

 

Thank you

[psydii]

I have no practical experience beyond your's on this. However the scenario described is one that Meru sells itself on being able to support well (via some nifty traffic management tricks), and I have heard good things from people whose reputations depend on these sorts of implementations going well.

 

If you want re-seller neutral advice maybe try giving siracom a call. They are Meru only, and will be your reseller's supplier and so will give you the Meru line avoiding any politics or sales tactics that your supplier may be using.

 

Assuming you have two dual band radios per AP, the really key thing is your 5Ghz coverage. If that is good then IMO 600 stations on a 21 AP network will be fine, though you'll need to see where the hot points are, and possibly increase the AP count in those areas. In my experience and making some assumptions based on your numbers (600 student site 42 classrooms no mention of coverage in offices) You will probably need 10-20 more APs to give a genuinely 'just like a wired LAN' experience. However if they are mostly surfing the internet and syncing to SkyDrive (most likely given what looks like a 1:1 initiative) then you probably already have the coverage you need.

[CyberNerd]

from my experience a Meru AP should be able to handle 30 connections provided they have 1GB/s uplinks.

We've also gone for 1 ap per 2 classrooms on the theory that 2 classrooms won't be using 30 connections simultaneously. We have about 75 AP's.

You can always add more AP's if you have the licenses for the, and since they all run on hte same channel you don't need to worry about overlap.

 

Also make sure that your switching infrastructure is in good condition - aggregated links from the controller to the core, all AP's on 1gb's to the core.

[gaomingfeng]

Hello, I have a mc3000. And ap320., But I do not know how to upgrade to 802.11n AP320. There licenses.