Villanova University Rolls Out Meru Wireless LAN System in Major Network Upgrade and Expansion

Business Wire, March 5, 2007

University Cites Ease and Speed of Installation, Improved Performance and Reliability as Key Factors in Replacing Legacy System with Meru

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Meru Networks, the leader in wireless infrastructure solutions that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise, today announced that Villanova University, the oldest and largest catholic university in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with more than 6,000 undergraduate students, has upgraded and dramatically expanded its wireless campus network using Meru's next-generation Wireless LAN (WLAN) System. The new system provided an easier-to-install, higher-performance replacement to the school's legacy wireless network.

The Meru WLAN System meets the growing needs of college campuses, including the ability to support a high density of users as well as the delivery of advanced, real-time learning applications such as video streaming. Meru's unique, single-channel architecture enables IT teams to install the network without complex channel planning or special power management.

One of the nation's most "connected" campuses, Villanova has excellent technological resources for students. Today, all freshmen are given laptop computers, and they can access the Internet wirelessly throughout the campus. Villanova also uses a wide variety of advanced applications to enhance the learning process, including online testing and streaming video.

As part of its initiative to "unwire" the campus, Villanova had initially deployed a Cisco WLAN. As it tried to expand the wireless coverage area, however, the university found it needed a wireless system that could support the bandwidth needs of a growing number of student users and scale without interference issues.

"When we realized that we wouldn't be able to move forward and meet our goals of providing campus-wide pervasive wireless with the existing WLAN, we turned to Meru," said Bob Mays, director, network and communications for Villanova. "With the Meru Wireless LAN, we're able to easily and quickly deploy the system and Meru's single-channel architecture allows us to support a great number of users, along with the advanced applications they need, without interference issues."

To date, Villanova has deployed the Meru Wireless LAN System in five dormitories and two academic buildings of the School of Arts and Sciences, and plans to expand the system into other parts of the campus. "I've already purchased the access points necessary to replace the system in the School of Engineering and within the next three years, we'd like to have fully replaced the old system and have pervasive wireless access for our students throughout the campus," said Mays.

"Villanova's situation is common to what more and more universities are experiencing," said Sarah Kim, director of education solutions marketing for Meru. "Students want the flexibility of being able to connect from wherever they are on campus - be it their dorm, a classroom or the cafeteria. It's much easier and more cost-effective for a school to deploy a Meru Wireless LAN in existing buildings and dormitories than it is to pull cables or deploy a traditional system that requires extensive site planning."

Other features unique to Meru help Mays to maintain a very reliable network, even when the university is faced with extremely high numbers of users on the network. Among these, Meru offers N 1 redundancy, wherein one can deploy a controller in a passive state and if another controller on the network fails, the passive controller will automatically become active.

About Meru Networks

Meru Networks is the global leader in wireless infrastructure solutions that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise. Its industry-leading innovations deliver pervasive, wireless service fidelity for business-critical applications to major Fortune 500 enterprises, universities, healthcare organizations and local, state and federal government agencies. Meru's award-winning Air Traffic Control technology brings the benefits of the cellular world to the wireless LAN environment, and its WLAN System is the only solution on the market that delivers predictable bandwidth and over-the-air Quality of Service with the reliability, scalability, and security necessary to deliver converged voice and data services over a single WLAN infrastructure. Founded in 2002, Meru is based in Sunnyvale, California. For more information on Meru Networks and its products, visit www.merunetworks.com or call (408) 215-5300.