Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Meru Signs Japanese Partners for Voice over WLAN

Meru Networks, a start-up offering voice over WLAN solutions, announced strategic partnerships with Nissho Electronics Corporation and Tokyo Electron Ltd, two leading Japanese IT solutions providers. Both companies will distribute, resell, and support Meru's 802.11 Wireless LAN products to meet the advanced voice and data requirements of their enterprise customers throughout Japan. http://www.merunetworks.com

  • Meru's technology provides application-specific QoS, high client density on a WLAN, and cellular network-style soft-handoffs between access points. Meru leverages a set of distributed algorithms in its access points and gateway to provide near deterministic channel access. Multiple access points collaborate to form one "virtual AP". No changes are needed for Wi-Fi compliant client devices. Meru Networks claims that by controlling over-the-air contention, its Air Traffic Control architecture yields a 5X effective performance boost for an access point. This leads to an ability to support up to 100 active users per access point, compared to a maximum of 10 to 20 users per access point today.


  • Meru's Wireless LAN System includes the Meru Access Point, a standards-compliant 802.11 access point that simultaneously acts as an access point and RF monitor; the Meru Controller, a centralized gateway by which all security, QoS and management policies can be configured and enforced across the entire wireless LAN, and the Meru System Director, an extensible, embedded software suite.