infoTECH Feature

July 06, 2009

Report: Meru No. 2 in 802.11n Enterprise WLAN

By Vivek Naik
The success of Meru Networks’ enterprise 802.11n wireless LAN solutions and equipment sales worldwide have pushed the company to the No. 2 spot, according to a recent market research study.
 
The  Dell’Oro Groupreport, “First Quarter 2009 Wireless LAN Report,” said that Meru Networks (News - Alert) holds the second rank position between Cisco, which holds the top spot, and Aruba, which is the third place holder. Meru Networks revenue in Q109 accounted for 12 percent of the total worldwide vendor revenue, the company said.
 
"Since Meru brought the first enterprise 802.11n products to market in 2007,” said Rachna Ahlawat, vice president of marketing for Meru Networks, in a statement. “802.11n technology has gained broad-based acceptance, with over 600 client devices now certified for interoperability by the Wi-Fi Alliance (News - Alert). With its greater range and performance akin to Fast Ethernet, 802.11n is allowing enterprises for the first time to consider wireless LAN as their primary communication medium.”
 
"Through the pioneering use of wireless virtualization techniques, Meru has created a full line of plug-and-play 802.11n solutions that outperform the legacy 'micro cell' products of other WLAN vendors yet cost less,” Ahlawat added. “Enterprises across all major industry segments – education, healthcare, hospitality, entertainment, retail, manufacturing, construction and government – are adopting Meru's 802.11n-based virtualized WLANs, which is driving our accelerated 802.11n market share growth."
 
Meru Networks earlierinstalled its new Meru 802.11n (WLAN) solution at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, or FIT, which is based at Manhattan, and the current 5 Giga Hertz  revamped network is fast and conforms to IEEE (News - Alert) 802.11n draft 2.0 . The standard permits data to be transferred at the rate of 300 Megabits per second (Mbit/s) on the physical layer . This speed translates to an average throughput of 100 Mbit/s for the user.
 
The new system has Multiple-Input Multiple-Output  built in. It permits multiple types of transmitters and receiver antennas. Such a diverse environment accepts multipath signals. In the old system multipath signals were a nuisance because these caused signal interference and degraded the quality of service.
 
With the new technology, Wireless Access Points can be introduced anywhere anytime. Wireless signal and reception through some of the old thicker walls is no longer a problem.
 
"802.11n is recognized as the future of wireless networks and as such constitutes the only meaningful measure of success for WLAN vendors today," Ahlawat said.
 
It is a well documented fact that more and more people are demanding wired and wireless broadband to such an extent that that broadband usage catapulted up by 84 percent in 2008, compared to 2007.
 
The Dell’ (News - Alert)Oro report revealed that 802.11n access points have tripled over the last year to log in at 18 percent, and the WLAN market is expected to grow to $1.9 billion by the end of 2010, with 802.11n accounting for the majority of total access point shipments.
 
“Organizations that previously deployed legacy 'micro cell' WLAN architectures – which mandate that all access points be placed on different non-overlapping channels – are realizing that adaptive channel-planning techniques make networks too unreliable for critical business communication," Ahlawat said. “Many are taking advantage of the current technology upgrade cycle to migrate to Meru's 'virtual cell' architecture, which allows them to derive strategic competitive value from their wireless LAN and concentrate on their business rather than the stability of their infrastructure."

Vivek Naik is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Vivek's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Amy Tierney
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