Saint Joseph’s University Aims for Campus-Wide Wireless Coverage with Meru Wireless LAN
Meru Chosen for Ability to Minimize Co-channel Interference, Treat All Users with ‘Airtime Fairness’
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Saint Joseph’s University has begun deploying a Meru Networks wireless LAN across its Philadelphia campus as part of a multi-year effort to bring wireless coverage to every building on campus.
The Saint Joseph’s wireless project began with the installation of Meru access points (APs) in the university’s freshman residence halls and the Campion Student Center, and continues with upper-class dormitories this summer. When students return to school this fall, 380 Meru APs will be providing wireless coverage to 25 buildings: all 20 residences plus two dining halls, a student commons, an administrative facility and an academic building. By the time the university replaces a legacy wireless network in its academic buildings and renovates its James J. Maguire ‘58 campus, located on a newly acquired adjacent property, up to 800 Meru APs will be installed.
According to Joseph F. Petragnani, assistant vice president for information technology at Saint Joseph’s, the university had installed a WLAN from Airespace (now part of Cisco) in selected academic buildings in 2004 and expanded it over the next several years. By early 2007, when the university embarked on a project to extend wireless coverage to its residence halls, the IT team began researching fourth-generation WLAN technologies, selecting Meru after an extensive vendor evaluation.
“The competition for funding dollars is always intense, so it’s critical to make the best possible use of those dollars,” Petragnani said. “We found Meru’s Air Traffic Control technology to provide the most cost-effective, efficient wireless solution – and the easiest to manage.”
Wireless Evolves as Primary Access Method
In some locations wireless will serve as more than just a convenient alternative to wired access, he said. “One of the buildings on the new Maguire campus has more than 30 classrooms. In the past it would have been typical to put large numbers of expensive wired connections in all those classrooms. Instead, we’ll be relying on wireless as the primary means of network access there.”
Caroline Owens, a senior network analyst at Saint Joseph’s, said Meru technology provides the “airtime fairness” needed in an environment characterized by the mix of client access speeds – i.e., slower IEEE 802.11b traffic and faster 802.11g traffic – on the school’s WLAN.
“As a network troubleshooting person, I was always hearing people complain the network was too slow,” she said. “With our old network there wasn’t a lot I could do about it – in a mixed b/g environment, the network would default to the lowest common denominator, and everyone would end up getting access at 11b speed. Meru ensures that the 11g clients aren’t pulled down by 11b traffic. At the same time Meru doesn’t let a few users who are sending a lot of traffic hog all the bandwidth so others can’t get on.”
Single-channel Architecture Eliminates AP Placement Concerns
“In the past we had to be careful about the number and placement of access points in a given area because of interference issues,” Owens added. “Meru’s single-channel architecture means co-channel interference isn’t a problem. If you find a coverage hole, you just drop in another access point wherever you need it. And for a particularly dense environment like a lecture hall, you can layer an extra channel with additional APs.”
The university also is considering a new generation of Meru high-performance 802.11n products, which are fully backward-compatible with existing 802.11a/b/g gear, for use on the Maguire campus when it opens in the fall of 2009.
Meru products currently being used at Saint Joseph’s University include the AP208 access point, which has two radios both capable of operating at IEEE 802.11b/g and 802.11a 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 interference by automatically selecting one channel for use enterprise-wide and layering additional channels where more capacity is required. With all access points (APs) occupying the same channel in a single “virtual cell,” the network can select the AP that will provide a given client with the highest data rate. The reliability of wireless connections is maximized independent of client type, and zero-latency roaming is enabled by the elimination of call “handoffs” between APs when clients roam. In contrast, legacy systems use a “micro cell” approach, which assigns different channels to adjacent AP cells, requiring precise and time-consuming channel planning and AP power adjustments, making it difficult to load-balance in dense environments, and limiting future network expansion.
About Saint Joseph’s University
Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1851, Saint Joseph’s University advances the professional and personal ambitions of men and women by providing a demanding, yet supportive, educational experience. One of only 142 schools with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter and AACSB business school accreditation, Saint Joseph’s is home to 4,150 full-time undergraduates and 2,700 graduate, part-time and doctoral students. Steeped in the 450-year Jesuit tradition of scholarship and service, Saint Joseph’s was recently named to the 2006 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction for General Community Service. The University strives to be recognized as the preeminent Catholic comprehensive university in the Northeast. For more information, visit http://www.sju.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 http://www.merunetworks.com or call (408) 215-5300.