Very High Density Wireless LAN Demonstration for BYOD: #1

Very High Density Wireless LAN Demonstration - Part 1 of 2

On June 13th, 2010 we ran a very high-density wireless LAN experiment at Meru Networks. What I'm going to share with you now is the parameters of this setup.

In the test, our goal was to create a very high-density environment where we wanted to approach one wireless device per square foot. So we used a space of 500 square feet. Within that we packed 500 Wi-Fi clients which was a mix of 802.11g, 802.11a and 802.11n. And in the 802.11n clients, we had a mix of 2.4 only clients and dual-band 2.4 and 5-gigahertz capable clients. And we had 500 of these packed in an area of 500 square feet.

In addition to this, we had 45 devices doing multicast video streaming, and we had 20 phones that were constantly doing phone calls. And of course, the total mix of these 500 clients was a mix of laptops, net books, iPads, iPhones, iTouchs, Blackberry, Nokia phones, Ascom phones and a variety of other devices.

In addition to all of these applications, we also induced about 100 megabits of end-to-end chariot traffic.
So when you think about this network, it is really an intense or extreme high-density environment. Again, 500 square feet, 500 devices, 45 video streams, 20 simultaneous calls,100 megabits of traffic. So, this was the environment.

In terms of the wireless LAN infrastructure that was created to support this application workload as well as the end-user workload, we had seven access points, these were 802.11n access points, which were a mix of Meru's AP300, 320 and the 320i which are dual-radio 802.11n access points with external antennas and internal antennas. Running our production, System Direct Release 4.0 with all standard capabilities and all standard features enabled.

As you might see from some of our companion videos, Meru is unique in its ability to do what we call a single-channel architecture, wherein we are able to paint the entire floor of coverage area with a single channel by means of having all the access points coordinate with each other and present a virtualized wireless LAN to wireless devices.

What we do in high-density environments is essentially leverage the single-channel concept so if you can paint the floor with one channel, you can increase capacity by essentially layering more and more channels. So what we did in this particular environment, to support this high-density, was create four channels in the 5GHz range, and these were 40MHz wide, and three channels in the 2.4GHz range and these were 20MHz wide. So we had a total of seven channels.

We enabled Virtual Port, which is a core Meru architectural construct that allows every advice to essentially get its own virtualized access point in the network and see a view wherein every device has sort of its access point that it carries wherever it goes in the network. This is how we are able to support wireless-like wide-user experience and is a core principal of our virtualized wireless LAN.

There's some companion videos that explain more of the technical detail.

For the purpose of this video, all I want to tell you is at the top-level, all our core features were enabled; Channel layering was enabled, Virtual Port was enabled on all the channels.


See the demonstration here: youtube.com/watch?v=5zfV2o12res

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

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• MeruNetworks
• Meru
• WLAN_Access_Points
• Wireless LAN
• Wireless_Lan_Controllers
• Wireless Software
• Mobile Computing
• 802.11n
• Wi-Fi_Networks
• Growth_of_Mobile
• Networked_Devices
• Channel_Layering
• BYOD
• Bring-Your-Own-Device
• Wireless_IT- Infrastructure
• Wireless_Networks
• Wireless_Technology
• Wi-Fi_Technology
• Enterprise_WiFi _Security
• 802.1n_Security_Management
• Wlan_AP
• WLAN
• Virtualized_WLAN
• Virtual_Cell
• Virtual_Port