Meru Wireless Network Brings Mobile Internet Access to Oak Ridge Public School System

Faculty at High School, Two Middle Schools Gain Flexibility for Teaching with Online Tools

 

SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 16, 2008 – Tennessee's Oak Ridge School District has deployed wireless networks from Meru Networks for use by students, faculty and staff in the newly-built Oak Ridge High School and in two middle schools.

In addition to providing wireless Internet access to some 3,000 users in the schools, the Meru wireless LAN will enable teachers equipped with tablet personal computers to move about easily in classrooms while wirelessly accessing and presenting instructional video materials.
By August 2008, some 170 wireless access points will have been installed in the three schools. More than half will provide wireless coverage across classrooms, administrative areas and even outdoor spaces on the newly-rebuilt 1500-student Oak Ridge High School campus.

Meru's technology was selected after a competitive evaluation of wireless solutions, according to Ray Thach, director of technology for Oak Ridge Schools.

"For us, wireless is about teacher mobility and the modern educational environment's need for uninterrupted Internet access," said Thach. "We put three major wireless vendors through a lengthy performance test – not in a lab environment but in a real-world scenario, with teachers using the networks in actual math and science classes. Only Meru powered up, easily deployed, and provided the performance and reliability we were looking for."

In addition to addressing critical teacher requirements, Thach said the Meru products, which use a single-channel approach to wireless technology, also made his network administration job less labor-intensive.
"With all the Meru access points on one channel, there's none of the tedious channel planning that is such a headache with other vendors' networks," he said. "Network moves, adds and changes are simple. If it turns out that we need another access point for coverage reasons, we just put one in without spending staff time on planning and placement – like plugging in a lamp to get more light. In a K-12 environment, where you're typically trying to accomplish the impossible with a small staff, not having to do channel planning was, by itself, enough of a reason to choose Meru."

Thach said future plans call for deployment of Meru high-speed IEEE 802.11n wireless equipment in selected areas, and eventual extension of the Meru WLANs to the district's four elementary schools, which are currently served with "thick" wireless access points.

Meru products currently being used at Oak Ridge Schools include the AP208 access point, which has two radios both capable of operating at IEEE 802.11a and 802.11b/g modes, and the MC3000 series controller, which provides centralized intelligent RF management, advanced quality of service and security for the wireless LAN.

Meru's single-channel approach to wireless coverage minimizes co-channel interference by automatically selecting one channel for use enterprise-wide and layering additional channels when more capacity is required. With all access points occupying the same channel, the Meru system creates a "virtual cell" that boosts the reliability of wireless connections independent of client type, and minimizes dropped connections by eliminating the need for "handoffs" when mobile users move between access points. In contrast, most legacy WLANs use a "micro cell" approach, which assigns different channels to adjacent network cells, requiring careful and time-consuming channel selection and power-level planning and limiting future network expansion.

About Oak Ridge Schools
The Oak Ridge public school system includes four elementary schools, two middle schools and one senior high school. The system also maintains a preschool program, a before-and-after school extended child-care program, a vocational program and an adult education program. The system serves more than 4,700 students and employs 334 teachers. The Oak Ridge public school system has consistently been ranked among the top-performing systems in the nation. For more information, visit
http://www.ortn.edu.

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.