Review: Meru Networks’ E(z)RF Service Assurance Module

Meru Networks has been pushing a single-channel “blanket” approach to wireless LANs for some years now, which contrasts with other vendors’ approach which puts each access point on a different channel to avoid interference.

At the beginning of this month, the company fulfilled a plan announced in December, to float on the Nasdaq stock exchange, making it one of the few wireless LAN vendors to make it to a public offering without getting purchased by a bigger network player (as for instanced happened when HP bought Colubris). At the time of writing Meru shares are changing hands at around $17.5.

While all wireless LAN vendors have been upgrading products, Meru Networks’ most recent significant product introduction is the  E(z)RF Service Assurance Module, launched in October, intended to provide an easy way for enterprise wireless LAN administrators to measure wireless performance. The E(z)RF SAM makes use of an existing Meru WLAN infrastructure to benchmark of the wireless network.

Instead of requiring laptops or other WLAN clients to perform the benchmark tests, the SAM sequentially turns every Meru AP300 series access point (except the AP301) in the network into a virtual client. It uses these clients to connect to every SSID (Service Set Identifier) configured throughout the network in each radio frequency band supported by the APs, while continuing to service clients at the same time. In this way, administrators can more easily understand the raw capacity and performance of their network on an ongoing basis, while still maintaining wireless service on all APs.

The company advertises the SAM as a critical component of its Wireless Service Assurance program—along with 802.11n speeds and Meru’s Air Traffic Control air fairness algorithms. Meru promises its WLANs will have less than an hour of downtime per year, and claims this allows them to replace the bulk of the wired network.

Meru is not the only wireless LAN vendor talking about service assurance of WLANs.  Aerohive’s Performance Boost and AirTime Sentinel technologies allow that company to offer SLA (service-level agreement) guarantees to certain users and groups, and Aruba has been pushing its management abilities too, and this week announced a spectrum analyser module for its access points.

However, Meru reckons it is the first to figure out a way to constantly measure system-wide performance without needing a lot of legwork or extra equipment.

My test network consisted of a single Meru MC3000 wireless LAN controller ($5,400/£3,550) and three dual-band AP320 802.11n access points ($1,495/£983 each). To add SAM functionality, I needed to add to the network a Meru SA (service appliance), the SA1000 ($6,995/£4,600), on which to run SAM 2.1 ($21,995/£14,465 software license for 50 APs, released in March) and the required E(z)RF Network Manager software module ($4,995/£3,285). So on top of any hardware and support costs for the controller ($5,400/£3,550) and three APs ($1,495/£983 each), SAM totals out to $33,985 (£22,352) for a network with 50 APs.

Continued…