Contact Information: PRESS CONTACTS: Heather C. Lowles Meru Networks 408 916-1455 Jessica DeCerce Morrisville State College 315 684-6041
Morrisville State College and Meru Networks to Implement First 802.11n Network Campus-Wide
IBM Global Technology Services and Meru to Design World's Fastest Wireless Network
| Source: Meru Networks
MORRISVILLE, NY and SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - June 19, 2007) - Morrisville State College
and Meru Networks today announced that the College has selected Meru
Networks' recently announced 802.11n wireless system for campus-wide
deployment. Meru Networks and IBM Global Technology Services have partnered
to design and deploy this college network, which is expected to be the
fastest wireless network in the world. The new campus-wide wireless
network, to be deployed in Q3 2007, will meet the performance and mobility
demands of its user community and provide optimum support for the next
generation of consumer electronics, personal computing, handheld devices
and wireless applications.
Morrisville State College, a State University of New York (SUNY) campus
located 30 miles southeast of Syracuse, has a national reputation for
pioneering the integration of advanced technology into everyday campus
life. In 1998, the College became the first in the SUNY system to integrate
laptop computers into its teaching and learning environment, partnering
with IBM to become a ThinkPad University. Further, in 2003, the College
was the first campus in the nation to comprehensively replace all residence
hall phones with individual cell phones for students. In 2007, the College
is the first to announce an all-campus 802.11n network in order to realize
its vision of increasing productivity and bandwidth service for every user,
everywhere on the network.
"We believe we are the first campus in the nation to move to 802.11n
technology," said Ray Cross, PhD, Morrisville State College President.
"Through our partnership with Meru and IBM Global Technology Services, our
students are gaining a competitive edge, especially important in today's
society where knowledge of the latest technology is critical."
The 802.11n Campus Network
To meet the increased performance and mobility demands made by the
proliferation of wireless devices and bandwidth-intensive applications, the
College decided to review its high speed wireless options. When their
currently deployed wireless product was announced to be end-of-life, the
search was accelerated to find an 802.11n solution. With student and
administration's expectations high for leading-edge technology, the College
team narrowed down their search to Meru Networks after evaluating multiple
vendors on ease-of-use and performance.
With its fourth generation WLAN architecture, which enables maximum
performance while minimizing both the initial access point placement
planning costs and ongoing support costs, Meru Networks was selected as the
best wireless system for the College. The IBM team was chosen to work with
Meru to install more than 900 new Meru Networks AP300 access points, each
equipped with two a/b/g/n radios to support all recently approved industry
standard "draft" 802.11n technologies. Leveraging Meru's unique channel
layering RF design, the network will support dedicated channels for the new
802.11n clients in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrums and will be
backward compatible with legacy 802.11b and 11g clients. In dense
classroom environments, the user-experience will be transformed from
DSL-level speeds to Ethernet-level speeds.
"IBM is pleased to be working with Morrisville State College and Meru
Networks on this innovative wireless project," said Laurence Guihard-Joly,
IBM vice president for Integrated Communications Services. "IBM's vast
experience in planning, integrating, implementing, securing and managing
next-generation wireless solutions will help the College ease the
transition to new technology fronts, improve their current infrastructure
effectiveness and make the network more accessible to users."
Meru's Innovative Architecture
Unlike the design-intensive channel planning architectures from other
vendors, Meru's approach does not require channel planning to mitigate
co-channel interference between access points. The evaluation team gave
high praise to Meru's unique approach which allows administrators to more
easily compensate for coverage holes and fluctuating data rates, thereby
both significantly accelerating network planning and deployment, and
simplifying ongoing network management and diagnostics. The Meru WLAN
System ensures optimal performance for every client on the network by
assigning each client to the best physical access point. Adding capacity or
dedicating spectrum to a specific access technology or user group is just a
matter of layering more channels and can be accomplished without increasing
network complexity, which is an important consideration for future
expansion.
"We're excited to be selected by Morrisville State, one of the most
technology savvy campuses in America, as they lead the way with the first
nationwide deployment of this new technology. Meru Networks' 802.11n
solution is the ideal choice when considering that today's applications
have high bandwidth consumption requirements and the college students and
faculty have high expectations for speed and performance," said Kamal
Anand, senior vice president of marketing and corporate strategy, Meru
Networks.
About Morrisville State College
Morrisville State College offers more than 70 bachelor and associate
degrees and options. Considered to be one of the most technologically
advanced colleges in the nation for its ThinkPad University program and
wireless technology initiative, the college recently became the first in
the nation to comprehensively replace landlines in residence halls with
individual cellular phones. Morrisville State College was also chosen as
one of the top five colleges in the nation for campus activities by Campus
Activities magazine. For more information, visit the college's Web site at
www.morrisville.edu or call 800-258-0111.
.
About Meru Networks
Meru Networks is the global leader in wireless mobility infrastructure
solutions that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise for Fortune 500
educational, healthcare, enterprise, and government markets. Its
industry-leading innovations deliver pervasive, robust wireless service for
business-critical applications. Meru's award-winning Air Traffic Control
technology brings the benefits of the cellular world to the WLAN
environment, and it offers the only solution on the market that delivers
the reliability, scalability, and security necessary for converged voice
and data services over a single WLAN infrastructure. Founded in 2002, Meru
is based in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit
www.merunetworks.com or call +1-408-215-5300.