Aruba or Meru

"kdw" hath wroth:

Personally, I prefer Symbol for wireless switches. Aruba is fine but I have zero experience. I can't advise which is appropriate for your unstated applications topology, and price point.

Meru got caught screwing with the 802.11 duration value in the 802.11 header. See:

Specifically:

"The 802.11 standard defines the CTS-to-Self duration value as being long enough to cover one following data frame (often in the range of

300 microseconds), but Meru inflates this value outside of the 802.11 standard to as high as 2,500 microseconds, thereby protecting multiple sequential data frames and monopolizing airtime."

Thanks Jeff Yes, I read the article on the Meru/Cisco test a week ago. I asked one of Meru's sales reps about it and asked him to send me documentation on the companies response. Have not seen the documentation as of yet. His personal response was the testers did not have a good understanding of

802.11 standards. No, I am not that gullable. I was intrigued by Meru's 1 channel virtual cell as it could address some of the issues I have in this installation. Our buildings walls are not very RF friendly thus we have had to place APs in all most every room making channelization and client hand-offs a real problem. While we are in a rural area with no other surrounding WLANs so monopolizing airtime migh not be an issue however, the company we choose needs to establish a "trusting work relationship" and as of right now at least, I am having second thoughts about trusting a company which as you said; "got caught screwing with the 802.11 duration value."

Please let me know if you hear anything else kdw

"kdw" hath wroth:

The official response was something like "Cisco does not understand

802.11". Nice try.

See:

which has a similar system called "blanket coverage".

Well, what you're apparently looking for is a seamless roaming system. You don't need a centralized ethernet switch to do that but it is easier that way. At this time, roaming is essentially controlled by the client, not the access point. The assorted marketing buzzword infested solutions transfer control to the access point. It can do that by simply reporting a lousy SNR from the wireless client, which will force the wireless client to scan for a different access point. There are other tricks, but that's the easiest. I'm not sure this is a critical requirement as there are clients that are becoming smart about roaming. Intel Proset and Broadcom 4.x client have settings that adjust how agressive a client should be sticking to one particular access point. Also, my experience with assorted small offices show that few wireless clients really move around. If your offices are really that RF hostile that the signal is lost when moving between rooms, you have the ideal situation, where the client simply re-associates on loss of signal when going from one room to another.

kdw,

I represent Meru and many other wireless vendors. Meru will work for you as long as you do not mind the slight standards incompliance. Honestly, are you planning on having a great deal of roaming prior to VoIP, either will work.

Meru touts a 2.19ms handoff, which in actuality doesn't mean much more than we're faster at dropping packets when roaming. With the SIP protocol, there's a packet about ever 20ms. If a vendor can get under

50ms, you won't drop a VoIP call and/or wont hear the "click" often associated with roaming on cell networks.

I'd love to discuss this with you at length. Please feel free to give me a call. I'm happy to offer advice and assistance where needed.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Christopher M. Hutchison, CEO NetSteady Communications, Ltd. Phone: 614-255-5575 Mobile: 614-853-0091 Skype: wifi_chris