JCrosse

No real experience of Extricom, but it is my understanding that the Extricom solution requires you to directly wire a connection from each AP directly back to the controller and not via other PoE switches etc. This may or may not be a problem, depending on your building layout and network infrastructure.

The direct link (without d/l manager) is as follows; http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/5/E/75EC4E54-5B02-42D6-8879-D8D3A25FBEF7/7600.16385.090713-1255_x64fre_server_eval_en-us-GRMSXEVAL_EN_DVD.iso

Please don't regard this as an attack, more as a reply to some of your comments based on my own knowledge and experience. I have experience of installing and configuring wireless solutions from many vendors (HP, Netgear, Cisco, 3Com, Meru) as well as supporting others such as Rukus, Aruba etc. Most of these are centrally managed controller based solutions and all which support auto channel selection and auto transmit power adjustment. The fact still remains that there are limited non-overlapping RF channels that can be used in any wireless deployment. If to many access points can see each other then auto hopping channels will make no difference. The only solution the is to auto adjust the transmit power. When the power is reduced so to is the signal strength leaving coverage black spots. This matter is complicated further when taking into account 802.11n and the spiky and erratic nature of the coverage patterns produced by 802.11n. Also the way 802.11n signals bounce around walls, objects and other obstacles means that something as simple as moving furniture in a room can effect the signal pattern and as a result power and channel selection. This would need to be taken into account with any wireless deployment as would other sources or RF interference, As for changing channels of a whole deployment, this would be a single setting that needed changing on a controller and would probably take around 2mins. This would be considerable less than replanning a conventional wireless deployment if a neighbouring building were to add interfering wireless post deployment. Couldn't agree more, but in a conventional wireless deployment the clients would merely connect to the AP broadcasting with the best signal strength and so the same channel. You can of course with most wireless systems configure load balancing but Meru's and other (4th gen) single channel architecture allows you to layer RF networks without interference meaning handling of client density (when configured correctly) should be greatly improved. When more devices are added an extra AP can simply be added and configured to load balance without the need to reconfigure channels or move existing APs. My understanding is that roaming benefits of a Virutal cell Wireless system are more a handy by-product and not designed to compete against 802.11r standards? also i would refer you to what other vendors are saying about the technology. here's a quote taken from Aruba's own website "802.11r is a new standard, intended to improve handover performance. In centralised WLAN architectures such as Aruba’s it offers only limited improvements, particularly if opportunistic key caching is used (see above). But 802.11r support should be on the checklist for the WLAN vendor." Nobody can deny that there are some key differences between Meru's wireless technology and others on the market. There are also some which are similar. But is it a bad thing to take a different approach to a problem. If Vendors don't come up with new ways to tackle problems then you simply end up with the same products being released over and over by every vendor, with each competing by trying to add new gimmicks and features instead of looking at their existing products and addressing why the problems are there in the first place. As for cost, I would not say that Meru equipment is cheap. It is considerable more expensive than some of the alternatives. They are however cheaper than some of the equivalent competition. Try getting some like for like comparisons with vendors such as HP or Cisco names which are trusted and known particularly in the commercial sector and there prices will suddenly seem much more reasonable. A Final consideration is that best value does not always equal cheapest. Other factors such as quality should be taken into consideration.

Hi all, My Name is Jon Crosse. I work for an IT Support and Consultancy company with a specialism in IT for education and public sector. I have often read posts on these forums and thought I should perhaps reply to some