wifispray

30 devices per room isnt high density in my opinion, also if internet is your only application im sure that will work no problem. The fact is you could have half the APs and it would likey work the same. Your right alot of people who talk on her are non-meru people, ive used in the past with very mixed results..... Glad your network is working well for you, hopefully in the future with IoT it will scale.....

Ok dead is strong, maybe dying is more the word to use. SINGLE channel doesnt scale in high density! Multi-Cell, Multi-Single channel, Channel Blankets, Channel duvet whatever its called now does..... With the world moving to IoT, single channel isnt the answer, maybe for schools its ok. Meru helped the industry to bring ideas such as airtime fairness, fact is they have fallen behind over the years.

Hopefully with the acquisition by Fortinet we will see Fortinet/Meru drop single channel, which is a dead technology! The truth is Meru had some great ideas with this that have been since fixed by the standards. Problem with Meru is they have been very niche for many years and due to the market not adopting single channel almost caused there demise. Although it doesn't break standards it takes a view on specific parts of the standard which doesn't play nice with neighboring Wi-Fi, they adjust certain parameters which allows there APs to transmit quicker (adjusting inter-frame spacing etc).... Its great to see them being purchased although for a very small price for a WiFi company, look at Aruba/HP and Cisco/Meraki you will see its a steal. If they had not been im sure they would have slowly disappeared. This does bring uncertainty for anyone who is currently a customer, or people looking at this until the acquisition is fully complete. Mark works for Meru and will always be biased to his technology.

Looks like this is Microcell..... Shouldn't all the APs be on the same channel in Meru?

The best overall solution on the market for BYOD and Wi-Fi is Aerohive. With Aerohive you can create unto 10k private pre shared keys (Private PSK) per AP which makes guest/BYOD management very easy. You can then assign a user profile to each of the different user types (i.e. BYOD/Guest etc). As each AP has a layer 3-7 firewall built in it means that you can have a mixture of clients on the same SSID and segregate nicely. You then get a good view of all the applications running on the network as the firewall is able to see the different applications. As recommend LAN3 are a good supplier in the UK that have come highly recommend before.

So native cell? i.e. Multicell

Meru have a product called IDM, Cloudpath is another option and iBoss is also worth considering

Ill take your word it worked great with 70 clients on an AP320..... That would be a lot of overhead with Virtual Cell enabled on 1 radio.

Did you have 4 SSIDs?

MCA networks offer much more scalability than SCA networks for a fraction of the cost. Per a high-end Meru VAR, building ubiquitous single-channel layers across a campus adds about a 50% cost penalty (at minimum) to have 3 layers for 2.4GHz and only 2 layers for 5GHz. That's pretty steep considering that MCA networks can scale far beyond that level for 50% less cost. Heavy saturation comes from 2 things: high client density and heavy utilization by those clients. A single channel can only withstand a given amount of utilization until it saturates, wherein lies Meru's scalability problem. By use many times as much free bandwidth, MCA systems can far out-scale SCA. When interference happens in a particular area, MCA systems can have ONLY the AP covering that particular area change its channel to recover that available bandwidth, whereas SCA systems cannot. Meru's system doesn't support high client density at all. Their system is limited to (64 - #SSID per radio), which means if there are 4 SSIDs on a radio, they are limited to 60 client connections on that radio. That would mean 120 clients per AP. Worry less about the ethernet ports and more about the air contention!

In general controllers/aggregating traffic back to a central location doesn't cause to much overhead currently (depending on the network design). But with the adoption of 802.11ac in your case this is going to become and issue. A lot of wireless vendors now (Like Aerohive/Airtight and now Aruba) are creating controller-less products to tackle this problem. This basically means that everything is handled at the AP from a data/control perspective allowing the wireless to not have to traverse the network. It also makes things like QoS/policy enforcement/firewalling etc easier. It also allows you to control what hits the network and what doesnt. In the case of Meru this shouldnt be a massive issue, as Meru only uses a single channel and doesn't have the ability to hit the same speeds as multi channel solutions.

I would say if your looking at a cloud based solution the best choice (currently/at time of writing this) in the market is Aerohive. They are the leaders in this space.

As with everything, over marketed on the actual performance gains, but at PHY Ruckus are currently marginally better than all...... Every vendor has a benefit and short coming.... Its finding which ticks more boxes than another based on your requirements.

HAHAHAHA..... This made me laugh. Wonder if someone in marketing got fired?

Very true. However, The thing with Ruckus' solution is client support and moving to more than just downlink. I think standards will win out...... they always do. But Ruckus stand a great chance at leading the pack.

But on the flip side with cohabiting channels you are open to more of the effects of co-channel interference or for a better work co-channel congestion. The system would need to be more TDM like to fully achieve this, i don't believe any vendor has achieved this yet...

Everyone has issues with DFS channels single channel or multi channel.... Hopefully OFCOM will free up more spectrum to mitigate this issue. I don't think everyone will be offering channel blanket like solutions in the future, what makes you say that? Beamforming is an interesting one... Ruckus choose to focus there product on this (they have the best AP at L1). Now with 802.11ac this becomes standards based so no longer single benefit to Ruckus, but they maybe understand this better than anyone. Fact is Beamforming is very important for the next phase of 802.11ac wave 2 where we have MU-MIMO.

The reality is like "SYNACK" says only Meru (and extricom) work with a single channel architecture. All other vendors are not focusing on this, through choice and not limitations in architecture. Without testing each vendor it is hard to say in your environment which will work best. Single channel is best suited to smaller and less dense environments and where the RF environment doesn't change very much (unless you are willing to look at channel layering which adds cost). Multi channel or Microcell is more adaptive and has more build in features to handle density environments (like RRM and using multiple channels). There is always much discussion in the industry about this, but to date none of the major vendors (Cisco, Aruba etc) have decided to move down the single channel route. Only they can comment as to why?

The best option is Aerohive, closely followed by Meraki... From the testing I have done (for ease of deployment)....

A really good guide here to read.... http://www.wlanpros.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Seven-Rules-for-Accurate-Site-Surveys1.pdf Should help you understand the process and what you should be getting.

I am an independant..... I like to give people facts about the technologies that are not influenced by over marketing. The truth is all vendors have a place in the market and offer something. Selecting the vendor should be based on many things but focused on the customer requirements....... Never just a one product for every situation.

I have seen Meru work well in schools...... Dont get me wrong the technology works, they wouldnt be selling so much otherwise in schools.

Meru Networks outperforms Cisco and Aruba in 802.11ac testing: Tolly Group - ARN - Facts ....... An independent report commissioned by Meru. There are no facts here its ALL marketing. All schools need to test the solutions offered by the vendors and make up there own minds what works best for them..... Meru shouldnt be a defacto for school... Neither should Ruckus...

Single channel vs Microcell...... Age old debate really. Meru have been doing single channel for some time now and are the only ones really in the market that do it well...... However you must question why no other vendor has decided to venture into this market. Lets take an example of formula 1. If one of the car manufactures creates a distinct benefit over the completion they will all monitor the advantage, if this gives them better performance they will all copy it, if not they wont. It’s a bit like Meru and everyone else. All vendors copied the Meru airtime fairness system (created there own scheduling system) because it gave benefit. Nobody has copied the idea of single channel... Why? Co-channel interference.......The fact is that single-channel WLANs are indeed affected by co-channel interference in the same manner as the Microcell WLANs, but to a much more significant degree. Co-channel interference becomes one of the most significant challenges to performance in the single-channel architecture.

Look at a better system like Ruckus or Aruba (controller based), these products are more feature rich. Or if you want to future proof yourself its best to look at products from Aerohive/Meraki and Airtight...... The controller will be dead soon.