Meru launches 802.11n line

Meru Networks today unveiled a line of enterprise wireless LAN equipment based on the still-under-development IEEE 802.11n standard, joining the growing line of WLAN vendors choosing to commercially launch the robust broadband technology before it the standard is finalized.

The new Wi-Fi technology promises capacity as much as six times higher than current 802.11 WLAN technologies as well as reducing spotty coverage and connection issues associated with 802.11a, b and g systems. While the IEEE has delayed passing a final standard, the Wi-Fi Alliance has agreed to begin certifying products based on the last draft presented by the engineering body, calling it Draft-N.

While deploying any pre-standard technology uses raises concerns about future interoperability with the future standard, Meru vice president of product marketing Steve Troyer said that the vendor is confident that the Wi-Fi Alliance certification profiles will assure an easy software upgrade path to full 802.11n compliance in the future. Furthermore, he said, Meru’s enterprise customers are not only comfortable with Draft-N standard, they have immediate need for the advantages the technology brings.

“We’ve done quite a lot of research on this and have talked to a lot of customers,” Troyer said. “We feel we can deploy Draft-N confidently, especially with the Wi-Fi Alliance stepping up.”

While Draft-N products have been emerging in the market since last summer, many of those have been consumer or home-office products. Meru is launching its portfolio of enterprise routers, access points and network control software, targeting its core base of industry verticals. Specifically Meru is launching a family of 802.11a/b/g/n multi-radio access points, called the AP300, using the same channel-layering architecture of its other W-LAN products. It is also releasing a new WLAN controller, called the MC5000, which Meru has engineered specifically to handle the expected huge surge of traffic new 802.11n networks will bring. The modular controller can be scaled to handle 1000 access points and multi-gigabit data traffic.

Meru is also releasing an overlay traffic distribution system it is pairing with the core WLAN technology. In order to deal with the high-traffic loads on a network, the 3TDS separates control traffic from the data traffic on the network, sending control to a central controller, but allowing data traffic to flow between distribution nodes on the network instead of being centrally routed. Meru said the dispersed traffic model will allow enterprises to save on upgrades to their wired Ethernet switching backbone.