Pervasive Wireless LANs

1. Pervasive Wireless LANs Serving The Needs Of Higher Education Kamal Anand VP Marketing kamal@merunetworks.com

2. Company Background • Founded in 2002 • Customers include Higher Ed, Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing, F500 • Deployed in over 30 Higher Education Institutions

3. Wireless LAN Evolution Hubs, Switching to Coordination Stand Alone Pervasive Hot-Spot • Bridge • Centralized security and management • High Density, QoS, • Transparent mobility • Multi-Services WLAN • Wireless hub • Minimal AP • WLAN Switch • Coordinated WLAN* Number of Clients and Coverage • Voice and Data • Business applications • Primary connectivity • Video emerging • Email, Web • Email, Web Applications Products / Technology Architecture * Gartner’s Dulaney describes as “4th Generation

4. Enterprise WLAN Product Evolution 2000-02 2003-4 2004-5 1st Generation Stand-alone 2nd Generation Centralized 3rd Generation Coordinated Meru Generation 2 + RF Intelligence High Density QoS Zero Handoff Cisco 1200+SWAN Symbol Aruba, Trapeze, Airespace … Services / Scale Cisco 350 Orinocco RoamAbout Coordinated AP’s Central Controller Generation 1 + Central Management Security Basic Connectivity Aggregated AP’s Central Switch/ Appliance Stand-alone

5. Meru WLAN ProductsSimple Deployment Architecture Meru AP AP L2 / L3Backbone AP Meru Controller • Coordinated Access Point • Air Monitor + Access Point • Application Flow Classification • Contention management • Controller • Centralized appliance for coordination, management and security • Built-in application Flow-Detectors e.g. SIP, H.323, Spectralink SVP • Platform for services: e.g. Location Tracking Floor 2 Floor 1 Virtual AP Data Center

6. Enterprise Scale Deployment Meru AP AP Central Campus Deployment Options: • L2 LAN between AP and controller (e.g. branch office, corp bldg) • L3 campus network between AP and controller (e.g. campus) • L3 WAN between AP and controller (e.g. remote office) Overlay Network Leveraging: • Existing L2/L3 devices • Existing WAN connections • Existing WiFi clients Floor 2 Remote Office Floor 1 Branch Office Data Center Internet Meru Controller Servers - Radius, DHCP, LDAP Web

7. Pervasive WLAN Requirements Higher-Ed is Key Example • Budget constraints and service level expectations • Lecture halls, classrooms, libraries, unions. • Data today • Voice emerging – soft phones, Wi-Fi phones • Video – lecture content, video presentations • Students, faculty, visitors – constant movement • Student / faculty / guest security • Integration with network access control • Deployment and RF Intelligence • Predictable Performance in High Density • Multiple Applications: Data, Voice, and Video • Seamless Mobility • Integrated Security

8. Wireless Channel Planning Problem How should you place Access Points in order to achieve pervasive coverage and optimum performance? • Access Points are hubs: RF is shared medium • Connectivity bound by physical proximity to AP • Signal strength degrades with distance • Trade-off between data rate and coverage • Spectrum is limited (particularly in 2.4GHz band): Capacity is bounded in space • Interference is dictated by neighborhood of both transmitter and receiver (i.e. transmit power control is necessary but not sufficient) Goal is to deploy APs in a way that minimizes contention for shared spectrum across APs

9. RF Design and Planning Myth By doing channel planning and deploying on the three non-overlapping channels you can avoid co-channel interference

10. Deployment of APs in Pervasive WLAN: Co-Channel Interference x x -68dBm x x -95dBm 54Mbps 1Mbps x x Signal Strength There are 3 non-overlapping channels in 2.4GHz (Ch 1, 6, 11) Distance

11. Meru Coordinated WLAN Architecture • APs act as a coordinated system of antennas rather than each AP acting as an individual wireless hub • All APs on the same channel have the same BSSID (wireless MAC address) • Client only sees only one AP on a channel Physical WLAN Infrastructure Benefits: • Minimum RF Planning • Handoff totally transparent to clients • Load balancing transparent to clients • Ok to over-deploy APs for redundancy and rogue detection Client’s View of Meru WLAN

12. Meru Simplifies DeploymentMeru’s RF Planning Framework • Automatic channel planning • Automatic power control • Coordination of channel access across APs • Virtualization of a “cell” • Global optimization of settings based on environment goals

13. MAC problem: Trade-off between Throughput and Density • CSMA throughput degrades with contention • Contention loss is more severe in 802.11 than Ethernet • Cannot detect collisions directly • Backoff scheme trades off fairness for scale Peak Aggregate Throughput in Single Cell Environment 11 Baseband + Protocol Overhead 8 5 Contention Loss Total Bandwidth at Peak (Mbps) 802.11 MACPerformance 1 3 20-25 Number of Simultaneous Contenders

14. Meru Air Traffic Control TechnologyPredictable Performance with Density Active Users Per AP 100+ Peak Aggregate Throughput Meru AP Performance 11 8 5 20-25 Contention Loss Total Bandwidth at Peak (Mbps) Today Meru Today’s APPerformance 1 3 20-25 Number of Active Users

15. Predictable and Better End User Experience 1 Meru AP + 20 Clients 1 AP + 20 Clients Throughput Throughput • Predictable, uniformly fair throughput across all clients

16. QoS RequirementsWired and Wireless LANs • In order to provide Quality of Service, the infrastructure must have the following components: • Low delay • Low jitter • Low packet loss • Wired LANs addressed this by utilizing switches instead of shared medium hubs as well as increasing bandwidth

17. QoS: Wireless Requires More Wired Network Wireless Network S S Sender Needed: Scheduling + Contention Management Scheduling Packets Meets Requirements I I I Receiver R R • Packet scheduling provides QoS as duplex, switched medium • Even with the old hub architecture collisions could be detected in real-time unlike wireless. • Multiple stations contend for the same shared medium • While transmitting, sender cannot listen at same time for collisions • Scheduling not enough for QoS • Predictable channel access is key for jitter and QoS – typical 802.11implementations don’t provide this

18. Meru Air Traffic Control • Global knowledge of interference and resource usage at AP’s including knowledge of clients • Time-based accounting, not bandwidth-based • Inter-cell Coordination Global RF Resource Knowledge + Application Flow Detection • Deep packet inspection for understanding resource requirements of Application (e.g. SIP/Codec) Meru QoS Algorithms + Admission Control • Resource management + Per-flow Scheduling • Uplink and Downlink accounting of packets / expected packets • Reservation-based QoS + • Virtual carrier sense for uplink reservation/QoS • Contention-free periods and contention periods. Control Mechanismsin 802.11 Standard

19. 20+ Low Meru Air Traffic Control Over-The-Air QoS Standards-basedOver-the-air QoS Over-the-air QoS Wired QoS Wired QoS AP AP Voice QualityMOS Score 4.0+ Generic Access Point + Standard Client Access Point with Over-The-Air QoS Standard Client Typically data and voice on Separate channels/network Converged Network - voice and data on same channels

20. How Meru Over-the-Air QoS Compares to Others

21. Meru Air Traffic Control TechnologyZero Handoff Virtual AP Architecture Today’s WLAN BSSID = M BSSID = M BSSID = A BSSID = B 00:00 01:00 No Handoff For Client 100ms – 1 sec between handoff Meru WLAN

22. “ SUNY Stony BrookMeru Customer Success Story We needed a WLAN system that was easy to deploy across many buildings on campus, could be centrally managed over an IP routed network, and could implement different security policies for different classes of users. Meru’s plug-‘n-play deployment model with centralized policies and control, its ability to deploy access points anywhere on campus across IP subnets, as well as its flexibility in supporting 64 different ESSIDs each with a different security policy made the system move to the top of our evaluation list. Mr. Richard W. Reeder, Chief Information Officer of SUNY Stony Brook University ”

23. Contention Management Effortless Scalability and Deployment L2/L3 Network Virtual AP • Supported over 500 users at the Conference on Instructional Technologies • With L3 mobility, extending wireless to a new site is as easy as plugging an AP into any data jack on the campus • Supports any user with a standard 802.11device without any client software Student Center Meru Controller Computer Lab Dormitories Library

24. Key Benefits of Meru for Pervasive WLANs • Minimal RF Planning: Meru virtually eliminates RF planning and manages co-channel interference • Highly Scalable: Meru supports extremely high user densities with any dynamic mix of voice and data • Handoff: Meru provides for client handoff without any loss for higher quality voice and data applications • Convergence: Meru allows you to deploy WLANs with voice and data on the same Access Points, in multi-cell networks. • True b/g Performance: Meru gives g clients full rate performance in mixed b/g networks

25. Thank You Serving The Needs Of Higher Education Kamal Anand VP Marketing kamal@merunetworks.com