Students at Loyola University New Orleans Gain High-Performance Wireless Access with Meru 802.11n WLAN
2009-01-12 16:35:00 -
Students returning to school at Loyola University New Orleans last fall found their residences and many other campus buildings equipped for the first time with high-speed wireless Internet access, provided by a new IEEE 802.11n draft 2.0 wireless LAN from Meru Networks.
Loyola's main campus, in the city's historic Audubon Park district, now has high-performance wireless coverage in 13 facilities, including its residence halls, the Danna Student Center, the Monroe Library, academic and administrative buildings, and numerous outdoor spaces. The Meru WLAN enables users bringing new-generation 802.11n-equipped laptops to campus to access email Internet sites and share files at speeds up to five times greater than those supported by earlier 802.11a/b/g standards. Several state-of-the-art teaching classrooms and all lecture halls are relying exclusively on the wireless network to provide students and faculty with network connectivity. The Meru WLAN also provides rogue detection capability to prevent unauthorized users from accessing the network.
Joseph Locascio, director of computer and network services for Loyola, said the Meru WLAN replaced a legacy wireless network from Cisco Systems.
"Most students nowadays are coming to campus with wireless laptops," Locascio said. "Our research showed that three-quarters of the new laptops on the market have 11n capability. In the few months since students returned to school, we've seen a higher volume of traffic going through the access points than ever before, so we know users are taking full advantage of the 11n support. And since the Meru network is fully compatible with the 11a/b/g standards as well, all types of clients are supported."
Loyola's IT team evaluated a number of top enterprise wireless vendors, and found that Meru offered "the best product and performance for the price," Locascio said. "With our many old, thick-walled buildings, we would have needed to deploy three APs from other vendors to get the same coverage we can get with one Meru AP. Meru's virtual cell architecture makes it easy to install and manage the entire wireless network from a central location, and, because all the APs are placed on a single channel, we don't have to worry about channel interference issues as we would with other vendors' products, where adjacent APs are on different channels."
The university has thus far installed some 60 Meru AP320 dual-radio 802.11a/b/g/n access points (approximately 100 will be in place by the end of the school year), along with two MC3150 controllers, which provide the centralized intelligence to easily deploy and manage large-scale wireless LANs.
Loyola first learned about Meru through its integrator, communications solutions provider Cat5 Technology of Hammond, La. Cat5 President Mark Gray said, "When Loyola was evaluating wireless vendors, certain competitors tried to raise concerns that Meru's virtual cell approach to wireless was too 'unconventional,' even though it's based on the same standards and has the same certifications as those vendors. The truth is that this 'unconventional' approach is helping Loyola offer service to more students with less equipment, less administrative overhead and less complexity."
In Meru's virtualized WLAN architecture, a single channel is selected for use by all access points enterprise-wide, and a dedicated "virtual port" is assigned to each client device to maximize performance, reliability, and enterprise control over wireless resources. Additional channels can be layered as more capacity is required. In contrast, legacy WLAN systems from other vendors use a "micro cell" approach, which assigns different radio channels to many small adjacent AP cells to ensure that no two APs use the same channel in the same place. This requires precise and time-consuming channel planning and AP power adjustments to work well, making it difficult to load-balance in dense environments, and limiting future network expansion.
About Loyola University New Orleans
Loyola University New Orleans is the premier Jesuit University in the southern United States. Opened in 1904 next to Audubon Park and chartered in 1912, the university today is home to 4,585 students, including 2,685 undergraduates and 1,900 graduate students in the schools of social sciences, law, business, music and fine arts, and humanities and natural sciences. The student-faculty ratio is 11 to 1, with professors recognized nationally and internationally by the Pulitzer Committee, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and numerous other professional and scholarly associations. The university is open to students of all faiths. For more information, visit www.loyno.edu.
About Cat5 Technology
Founded in 2004, Cat5 Technology designs, installs and manages advanced communications solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises seeking a lower total cost of ownership and a greater value for their technology investment without sacrificing manageability, quality or security. Customers value Cat5 Technology's solutions, managed and professional services and expertise based on the collective knowledge of its principals, associates, strategic technology partners and customers. Cat5 Technology, with offices in Hammond, La., serves customers throughout North America. For more information, visit www.cat5technology.com or call (985) 310-2301.
About Meru Networks
Founded in 2002, Meru Networks develops and markets wireless LAN infrastructure solutions that use virtualization to deliver pervasive, high-fidelity wireless service for business-critical voice, video and data applications. The company first introduced its award-winning virtual cell wireless architecture in 2003, and Meru products embody a complete departure from typical hub-based WLAN approaches, offering a wireless solution with levels of performance, reliability, security and cost-effectiveness previously found only in wired networking environments. Meru's solutions have been adopted in all major industry vertical markets, including Fortune 500 enterprises, healthcare, education, retail, manufacturing, hospitality and government. Meru is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has operations in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. For more information, visit www.merunetworks.com or call (408) 215-5300.
Meru Networks, Inc.
Jeff Knight, 408-215-5376
jknight@merunetworks.com
or
Ulevich & Orrange, Inc.
Janis Ulevich, 650-329-1590
ulevich@u-o.com
