BYOD: Enhances 1:1 Computing Initiatives Across the Campus

Meru Networks Enhances 1:1 Computing Initiatives

Hi, I'd like to talk to you today about something which has been a real motivation for Meru Networks in terms of both our technology development as well as how we see our products used in the market, and that's specifically the use of digital devices in K-12 or primary and secondary school education. The education market has been a very important one for Meru since its inception, and I'll be honest, I feel as if we've grown up with a lot of the initiatives around digital learning.

So whether it was the move towards bringing laptops into the classroom for 1:1 computing, or even more future-oriented things such as the use of digital textbooks, the use of laptops, tablets, and iPad type devices for classroom learning or even outside the classroom. Those are things we believe are really important to develop a broader richness in the education process, and also to make it possible for students to come out into the world after the education and actually be relevant in terms of what they're using and how it is used in the real world. So to accelerate and advance those initiatives that your school or district might be part of, I'd just like to highlight some of the ways in which we can help you to accelerate those and also save you money along the way.

Now, as people deploy 1:1 computing initiatives, there are some things that we found are very critical. Probably the most important one is having no disconnects and having students be able to logon simultaneously. In fact, there is one school district we worked with in the northeast; we were able to do a very quantitative study. We looked across the district -- 9000 students -- and what we found is we can save the district $2,800 per day in education because of the network not disconnecting, the network not delaying students from logging on, and the network not suffering any performance issues. Now how we do that is a combination of very unique technologies that only Meru can provide.

The first is what we call our Virtual Cell technology. Virtual Cell is so that every AP, every access point that's on the network has exactly the same channel. As your client -- a laptop, a PDA, a digital textbook -- as it's moving or roaming through, there's never a handoff. That means there's very little opportunity for disconnects and also performance gets maintained at a very high level. So your student who's roaming never sees any issues in terms of performance or degradation in quality.

The second technology I'll highlight is what we call Virtual Port technology. Virtual Port makes it so every client on the network is isolated. Everyone virtually has its own port. By doing that, that means one student can't impact somebody else. If you have a certain type of high-density video traffic or extensive voice traffic going on in one classroom, that won't impact anybody in an adjacent classroom or even in the same classroom. So Virtual Port, of course, helps to speed that. A third technology is what we call Airtime Fairness. Airtime Fairness means the first student who logs onto the network or the last student on the network, it doesn't matter. They all get equal access. They all get Airtime Fairness. As well, there's many other technologies we have. Air Traffic Control, Virtualized Wireless LAN and so forth. But the core of it is we provide for digital learning a very important thing, which is the devices you're starting to use often do not have an alternative when it comes into plugging into an Ethernet port. It may be an iPad, it may be a portable device, it may be a digital textbook. These are things that are inherently dependent on a high-performance, wireless LAN. So our encouragement is as you look at these initiatives, please, leverage Meru's experience and depth of knowledge in working with many school districts around the world and around the country to accelerate their deployment of these initiatives.

So that's why I encourage you, go to merunetworks.com, see some of our educational videos. We've worked with some of the leading educators around the world and we'd like to share that experience with you. So again, I look forward to helping you with your initiatives and I hope Meru can support and enhance the educational mission that your organization has. Thank you very much.

......Please See Interactive Transcript For Full Text......

For more info visit: http://www.merunetworks.com

Category:

Science & Technology