vconnolly

Hi Krish, if you were able to post the reference sites, then I'm sure we'd all appreciate being able to read them. In the mean time, than you to you both for your input - I know it's a difficult issue that needs careful investigation. For the record we went to a demonstration yesterday and watched 30 laptops connect to one AP and watch full HD video being streamed, simultaneously, to all laptops; in addition there were voip handsets in use and video phones. of course, that's not quite a whole school approach and 30 laptops is not 400... which is why I'm interested in people's comments. Of course there is that slight feeling that something that seems too good to be true ... just might be... cheers, Vaughan

We're looking in to Meru for our school as well and I've read quite a bit about it and Ruckus. My reseller favours Meru and we've seen it work wonders in test bed situations - although these aren't your normal school coverage situation. Having read about Ruckus's rather innovative means of adapting the wireless signal pattern, I thought this very clever - but I am told that it needs a lot of careful planning in where one puts the APs as interference between APs can still be quite an issue and (because the controller throttles back) create dead spots. The single channel architecture of Meru also makes sense - but I wonder just how clever it's heuristic algorithm is when attempting to predict needed traffic through it's Fair Airtime Policy. My reseller tells me that Extricom uses similar tricks to Meru but isn't as good - given they could be selling us any product, I tend not to accuse him of bias! What I would be interested in hearing however is how it goes in a normal school - brick walls, funny angles, glass panels in doors and a range of devices - sometimes 30 to a room. If anyone can write of their experiences I would be most grateful. It would also be helpful to know what kit you actually used to get this performance - I see there are many different types of AP etc. thanks in advance.