Behold the Power of Meru’s 802.11ac Access Points

Meru has announced a major success of its WLAN 802.11ac solution at the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) in Atlanta, according to recent announcement. Meru deployed its wireless network solution there at the start of this summer, just in time to test the technology with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) show that ran from June 27 to July 1 this year. The conference forced to enterprise high density WLAN solution to handle 13,000 simultaneous connections during peak times, with as many as 1,200 connections per room within the 3.9 million square foot facility.

Use of mobile devices at the ISTE has been mushrooming of late, growing from 7,000 devices in 2013 to over 13,000 this year. The sessions have grown increasingly interactive, which when combined with BYOD make for a difficult challenge in keeping all users connected to the network with adequate speed. During this year’s ISTE conference, the swarming, ravenous-for-WiFi attendees repeatedly “pushed the limits” of the GWCC’s gigabit internet connection.

While Meru and technology partner CCLD Networks faced overwhelming demand, the building itself made matters even more difficult. Beyond the 90 acres of multilevel floor space, the WLAN solution had to handle:

three adjacent buildings containing twelve exhibit halls, 105 meeting rooms and two ballrooms. Other amenities include a FedEx Kinko’s office, Starbucks coffee shops, a gift shop, a food court and a stand-alone restaurant.

CCLD Networks, however, knew they had a winner with Meru. CCLD “selected, designed, deployed and managed the network” for the successful event. Here’s what Jim Jenkins, Financial Director at CCLD had to say:

“There are lots of Wi-Fi solutions available today, but none of them ensure pervasive coverage, high device-density handling capabilities and seamless roaming the way Meru does. Large public venues like the GWCC present a wide variety of challenges that can break connectivity between access points. Meru Virtual Cell technology helps us make sure that all of the users on the property have seamless roaming and high performance, no matter where they are.”

Mark Zimmerman, GM of the GWCC had praise for Meru too:

“Networks like ours have to serve a wide variety of ‘customers,’ from exhibitors to attendees, contractors and our own staff, all of whom expect and require flawless reliability and the highest possible performance. Meru 802.11ac helps us ensure that we can handle a practically unlimited number of devices running the highest bandwidth applications, including video and voice, on a consistent basis.”

Meru has a number of unique features that help to overcome the challenges wide open spaces present to wireless network solutions. One is Meru’s MobileFLEX architecture, which simplifies capacity addition, provides single channel and channel layering options and “can deliver up to 3 times the capacity” of other WLAN solutions. Meru’s E(z)RF® Network Manager, a centralized network management software application “provides network-wide monitoring, end-to-end visibility and powerful control of wireless deployments.” it utilizes an “intuitive, web-based interface” that “delivers superior ease-of-use and offers instant access to real-time and historical performance metrics on each managed controller, access point and client.” The control software can also “be deployed on a Meru Services Appliance or hosted on a VMware-based virtual appliance.”

Sounds like a powerful 802.11ac WLAN solution to me.

For the full piece on Meru’s success at the conference, click here.