Utah State University Blankets 400-Acre Campus With Wireless Coverage Using WLANS From Meru Networks

Business Wire, March 19, 2008

Goal of '100 Percent Coverage' to Be Met With 700 Meru Indoor and Outdoor Access Points

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Utah State University has blanketed its 400-acre campus with wireless coverage for more than 25,000 students, faculty and staff using wireless LAN equipment from Meru Networks.

More than 700 Meru wireless access points are installed in some 150 buildings, including all academic facilities and residences, on the Logan, Utah, campus, as well as at a number of remote sites across the state. Future plans call for coverage to be added in widely-used outdoor venues and inter-building corridors, providing a foundation for campus-wide Internet telephony (VoIP) usage.

Utah State decided in early 2007 to replace its existing wireless system of about 50 access points in a few buildings with a campus-wide deployment, according to network team coordinator Kevin Grover. The goal was "100 percent coverage on campus," reflecting the university's position as a technology leader and serving as a tool to attract new students.

After evaluating a half dozen wireless LAN vendors, the university selected Meru. Key to the decision, Grover said, was Meru's single-channel technology, which made the WLAN easy to deploy and maintain without a large staff.

"All the other systems we looked at were just extensions of old access-point technology, requiring extensive engineering and planning up front to make the three-channel deployment cover all the areas without interference," he said. "If we found a dead spot in a building after deploying, we'd have to re-engineer the channel allocations to accommodate another access point. Meru takes a completely different approach, putting all the access points on one channel. Now if we find a dead spot we can just throw up another access point and not have to worry about channel interference. With this approach we can get by with one full-time employee monitoring and managing the entire wireless network."

With all access points operating on the same channel, Grover added, Meru technology is also well suited to handle VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol), because no call-degrading "handoffs" are required as users roam around buildings. The same advantages apply to streaming video applications, such as the "remote rolling classroom" the university created as a pilot research project in elementary education; a large-screen TV on a cart can be moved from place to place and wirelessly connect anywhere.

For indoor wireless coverage, Utah State uses Meru's AP201 single-radio IEEE 802.11a/b/g access point, which supports 2.4- and 5-GHz operation. For outdoor coverage, the university has tested Meru's OAP180 Rugged Access Point and plans to begin deployment this spring, providing network access in areas where students and faculty congregate and use their laptops and PDAs, as well as in corridors joining academic buildings. Nine Meru MC3000 series controllers are deployed, separated into two groups - academic and residential - each with an N 1 configuration for failover purposes.

Currently based on the IEEE 802.11b/g standard, the Utah State wireless network will begin to incorporate the newer high-performance 802.11n standard in the next major upgrade, Grover said.

About Utah State University

Founded in 1888, Utah State University, Utah's land-grant and space-grant institution, is nationally recognized for its intellectual and technological leadership in land, water, space and life enhancement. The university has 850 faculty members who provide education for more than 23,000 undergraduate and graduate students, including 10,000 in continuing education sites throughout the state. USU occupies 7,000 acres, 400 of which are on campus, with more than 200 buildings, 63 of them devoted to academics. USU also has three branch campuses and Extension offices in all of Utah's 29 counties.

About Meru Networks

Meru Networks develops and markets 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, Calif. For more information, visit www.merunetworks.com or call (408) 215-5300.