June 7th, 2010
What’s so different about Meru Wireless?
Meru are the only wireless vendor, we at EAC Network Solutions are currently aware of, that have solved each of the traditional limitations of wireless networks, which cause many of the known wireless problems. More specifically Meru has solved the problems with providing a reliable wireless network infrastructure within an education environment. Meru has two specific features that make it the wireless network of choice, especially in dense client deployments like education:
Air Traffic Control, Meru operates a fair air time policy for all wireless clients, the controller allocates each wireless client the same amount of wireless bandwidth in an orderly fashion by simply passing a “token” to each client when it is their turn to transmit on the wireless. This technology recovers a huge proportion of wireless bandwidth (about 90%) that is otherwise lost in other wireless networking technologies that use the traditional packet collision and resend methods to regulate traffic flow.
Virtualised WLAN – Single Channel Architecture, Meru wireless networks operate a single channel architecture, which allows access points to be positioned closer together without fear of conflict. This allows a Meru wireless network to provide a higher level of wireless bandwidth within a more compact location, Access points should be positioned no closer than 18 metres apart to guarantee maximum available wireless performance.
Because of Meru’s single channel architecture it is also possible to create layers of wireless bandwidth on top of one another, simply by adding more access points and configuring multiple radio profiles for the known non-conflicting channels, adding the potential to provide between 3 and 10 times more wireless bandwidth on top of a solu-tion that is already way ahead of the competition in the specific circumstances you of-ten find within educational wireless deployments.
To summarise, Meru created their wireless networking product from the ground up, challenging and overcoming each of the traditional wireless limitations. It is because of this approach that Meru is the first wireless networking platform that offers itself as a real alternative to installing a hard wired network. Meru have achieved a Service Level Agreement of 99.99% wireless uptime, by using its virtualized WLAN architecture, Air traffic Control technology, and its Service Assurance Manager Software, tested on over 2700 sites.
Tags: fair air time, Meru, school wireless, single channel, wireless
Posted in Meru Networks | 1 Comment »
June 6th, 2010
EAC Network Solutions arranged a Meru ‘Road Show’ at a school in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The event was attented by representatives of around 10 local schools.
After the obligatory ‘death by powerpoint’ presentation which wasn’t helped by the schools ground staff mowing the grass just outside the room where the demonstration was being held.
All the attendees participated in the demonstration by each logging on a number of eeepc netbooks to a windows server network, via the Meru wireless system (in this case just a 1500 controller and a single 611 Access Point). All of the machines logged on within 1 minute and 20 seconds, each downloading a 6Mb mandatory user profile.
For the next part of the Demo, each machine launched a Multicast High Definition Video session from the local server (The Meru has a ‘Video Services Module’, that allows the controller to convert each multicast connection to a unicast one, ensuring perfect picture quality for every client), at this point you have to imagine a room full of grown ups all smiling like kids in a sweet shop, not quite believing what they are seeing.
Not content with streaming video to 30 clients we also start some VoIP call connections using WiFi hadsets, and start half a dozen iPod touch devices downloading video from a local web server.
One of the attendees summed up the whole demonstration for us with the following comment:
“So Meru basically does everything we’ve always been told you can’t do with a Wireless Network”
Call EAC Network Solutions on 01844 21 50 50 to see where and when the next Meru Road Show or Demonstation will be held.
Tags: Meru, school wireless, Schools, success, wireless network
Posted in Meru Networks | 5 Comments »
May 19th, 2010
After investigating each of the major wireless networking vendors products for suitability within the education marketplace, Ben Hammond of EAC Network Solutions highlighted one vendor that stands out above the rest, Meru!
Meru is different by design, the whole solution has been redeveloped from the ground up, each wireless principle has been looked at, analysed for it’s weaknesses and redesigned. The net result is a Wireless Platform that surpasses all expectations and delivers exceptional reliability and performance.
As a specialist supplier to Educational establishments EAC Network Solutions has invested in training their engineering team on Meru’s product range, and have been accepted as a Meru Partner.
With access to a complete Meru Demonstration Suite, which enables schools staff to participate in a simulated class wireless logon, and stream video to 30 wireless clients simultaneously. Each customer that has seen the demonstration has been highly impressed with the solution, and EAC Network Solutions are proud to be able to supply Meru to it’s customers.
Tags: Meru, school wireless, Wireless Networks
Posted in Meru Networks, Wireless Networks | 1 Comment »
May 19th, 2010
The education environment is a specific challenge for wireless networking simply because of the typical numbers of wireless clients all connecting within a small area, the classroom, all trying to perform bandwidth hungry actions at the same time, typically under instruction by a teacher, “OK class, log on and open your spreadsheet that you should have saved on your personal share in our last lesson”. This specific environment and sequence of events puts an excessive peak load on the available wireless bandwidth, often with undesirable results such as slow logons and numbers of machines simply loosing connection for periods of time. Wireless traffic in this scenario can be equated to a single voice being heard above the crowd, with more than a few users most wireless networks are incredibly inefficient, as demonstrated in the graphic below.
Tags: Meru, school problems, school wireless, wireless, wireless network, wireless problems
Posted in Wireless Networks | No Comments »
May 19th, 2010
Wireless network technology has moved forwards at a rapid pace over the last 10 years, speeds have risen from 11Mpbs (reality of around 6Mpbs for data transfer) to around 300Mbps (200Mbps for data) today and standards are already in place for the next generation wireless to achieve around 600Mbps (400Mbps for data).We have moved from wireless networks made up of many individual access points, to “managed” or controller based solutions where the configuration and client connections are managed by an intelligent operating system on the controller. However there are still a number of specific limitations, almost all wireless networks suffer badly from:
- Contention for shared medium. Many clients fighting for a share of the available wireless bandwidth.
- Support for legacy devices 802.11b/g. The slowest client dictates speed, downgrading the wireless network performance for everyone.
- Co-channel interference. Wireless access points conflicting with one another cause the wireless signal to be degraded, creating holes in the wireless coverage, and massive losses in wireless performance.
- Client control association. Wireless clients connect to the nearest access point (strongest signal) rather than the one with the least number of connections, or least busy in terms of processing network traffic. Also clients don’t roam, staying connected to the access point until it has lost connection altogether.
Posted in Wireless Networks | 3 Comments »
December 10th, 2009
Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft’s next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, is available as an integral feature of Windows Server 2008 R2 and enables you to implement server virtualization with ease. Hyper-V allows you to make the best use of your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine.
Network administrators want flexibility in allocating computing resources for specific tasks. Virtualization technologies provide this flexibility by decoupling the hardware from the workload being performed. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 offers a robust, scalable hypervisor-based virtualization platform allowing for the provision and management of virtual server workloads.
Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 includes five core areas of improvement for creating dynamic virtualized environments:
- Increased availability for virtualized server environments through Live Migration, which allows you to move a virtual machine between two virtualization host servers without any interruption of service. This is achieved through the use of Microsoft System Centre Virtual Machine Manager.
- Improved management of virtualized data centers through the Hyper-V Management Console and support of PowerShell commands.
- Increased Performance and Hardware Support for Hyper-V Virtual Machines – up to 64 processors and 1TB Ram per physical host server, plus second level address translation and core parking for optimum performance.
- Improved Virtual Networking Performance through new networking technologies – VM Chimney (also called TCP Offload) and the use of Jumbo Frames.
- A simplified method for physical and virtual computer deployments, including adding, removing, and booting from .vhd files.
The following link to Scott Lowes blog is a fairly comprehensive comparison between Microsoft Hyper V R2 and VMware’s latest hypervisor vSphere.
Tags: hyper v, hyper v r2, hyperv, microsoft virtualisation, Virtualisation
Posted in Microsoft, Virtualisation | No Comments »
November 13th, 2009
It has taken 6 months, to discuss, negociate and finalise our partnership with Bradford Networks. However we are delighted that back in September we were accepted as a silver partner. EAC Network Solutions customer base is a perfect match for the Bradford Networks products, and our business model compliments Bradford Networks.
During this period, Bradford Networks have been working very hard to re-brand and re-release their existing products under a single product name Network Sentry, the main purposes of these changes are to provide customer clarity and to move to a modular pricing model, allowing customers to purchase just the modules that they require.
We have arranged two showcase days, to be held at London Wasps, on the 15th November and 6th December at games against Gloucester Rugby and Leicester Tigers respectively. Rick Leclerc, Bradford Networks Director of Sales Engineering will be co-hosting the events, presenting the product, and running a live demonstration.
We are delighted that there has been a great level of interest shown in attending these events. Due to the high level of interest shown in these events we will be planning more events in the near future.
Tags: Adaptive Network Security, Bradford Campus, Bradford Networks, London Wasps, Network Access Control, Network Sentry
Posted in Bradford Networks | No Comments »
November 12th, 2009
Welcome, I’m the blog administrator, it is my job to come up with the interesting and informative content you are expecting to read. Let me tell you what I have planned for our blog…
Over the next few weeks I will post a number of posts based on a number of loose subjects, some may be in relation to specific products and some more generic, I will be inviting a range of different people from EAC, our suppliers and our customers to contribute posts, and content ideas.
I also intend to start a blog about the staff at EAC Network Solutions and introduce specific members of the team, and tell you a little bit about what they do for us, and you our customers.
I hope you enjoy…
Tags: EAC Network Solutions
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
