Morrisville State College and Meru Networks to Implement First 802.11n Network Campus-wide

IBM Global Services and Meru to Design World's Fastest Wireless Network
 

MORRISVILLE, NY and SUNNYVALE, CA - 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 Morrisville State 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 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.