Meru Networks is a global leader in 4th generation wireless LAN infrastructure solutions. It has over 2,000 customers in 36 countries. Meru provides a comprehensive solution for wireless networks in education that includes centralized management, location services, and security services. The document discusses how wireless networks in K-12 schools are increasingly tied to strategic objectives like preparing students for the future, responding to growth, and taking advantage of funding opportunities. It outlines applications for wireless LANs in education and how the needs of students, teachers, and IT are changing. Meru's value proposition is providing a seamless wireless network that supports high-performance applications, future proofs the network, and has the simplest deployment and management with the lowest total cost

1. Wireless LAN for K-12 Schools
Enabling 21st Century Learning

2. Meru Networks Background
 Global leader of 4th Generation*
Wireless LAN infrastructure solutions
- Rated #1 802.11n vendor
 Over 2,000 Customers in 36 Countries
Marquis Deployments
- Largest Single Enterprise WLAN Deployment
- Highest Density Environment
- Biggest Dual-mode Cellular-Wi-Fi voice
Deployment
- First to Announce and Deploy a campus-wide
802.11n network
 Fastest growing Wireless LAN company
“Fastest Growing
WLAN Company “ “#1 802.11n vendor”
* 4th Generation per Gartner Classification

3. Comprehensive Meru Solution for
Wireless in Education
Backbone
Central Management
Location Services
Security Services
Remote APs School District Large School
Branch office School
Small remote Indoor / Outdoor District
1-5 AP’s 50-100 APs
location 100-1000 APs 1000+ APs

4. Wi-Fi in K-12 Increasingly Tied to Strategic Objectives
 Preparing for the Future
- 21st century skills/technology literacy initiatives
- Creating new learning spaces (outdoor areas, cafeterias)
 Keeping Up with Growth
- New building construction & modular classrooms
(over 350,000 in use in 2005)
- Modernizing (very) old facilities—average age of
US school buildings 42+ years
 Responding to Need for Real-time Communications
- Focus on safety & emergency communications
- Pressure to increase administrative productivity
- Staying connected with community & schools across district
 Taking Advantage of Funding Opportunities
- E-Rate
- State & local technology initiatives

5. Applications for Wireless LANs in K-12
 Student, teacher, faculty anytime, anywhere network
access
 Address state and federal testing requirements
(laptop carts)
 Wireless phones, PDAs, projectors, tablet PCs
 Interactive/collaborative instruction
 Emergency communications (voice) with teachers
 Student safety (video surveillance)
 Reduce property damage caused by vandalism
(video surveillance)

6. Technology Evolution of Education
• Education needs are changing
● Enabling teachers, students, and staff to become mobile
allows facilities to be better utilized,
● New education initiatives to be easily deployed, and costs to
be better managed
● Growing use of wireless laptops in education allows
computing resources to be shared
 Productivity growth drives learning
● Productivity improvements raise learning standards by
focusing more resources on teaching
● Wired networks don’t address mobility needs, are costly to
modify
● A low-overhead networking platform lowers costs by making
small IT staffs more productive
 Greater Return on Investment
● IT teams must squeeze higher returns from existing assets
while paving the way for new applications
● Solutions must be quickly, easily to deploy, manage, and
optimized for converged toll-quality voice, video, and data

7. Meru’s Value Proposition for Education
Meru provides education organizations of all sizes and needs with
a wireless network that:
 Provide a seamless RF environment with attributes of wired
 Support high-performance voice, video, data over wireless
 Future proofs network for unforeseen applications
- provides greatest ROI
 Simplest wireless to deploy and manage with lowest TCO

8. K-12 Schools Trust Meru to Deliver Wireless
Large District-wide Wireless Voice, Video, One-to-One
Deployments Data Convergence Computing Programs
 Cohoes: Wireless IP video
surveillance  Dozens of leading schools
 Several of the nation’s largest with one-to-one laptop
 ACPS: IP voice, video
districts programs
 World’s largest enterprise streaming, laptop carts
WLAN at the School District of  Best laptop cart performance
 Oregon Episcopal School:
Philadelphia Prepared for 802.11n with
●
Faster log-in
software upgradeable Meru a/b/
●
Higher density
g

9. Why are Schools Choosing Meru WLAN?
Reliability, Performance, Simplicity, and Cost
"When a cart with 25 laptops rolls into the classroom, everyone expects to log on
immediately. With our old system, half the class often wasn't able to authenticate and
get access. Now, with Meru WLAN everyone can connect at once, and our wireless
network is incredibly reliable."
“Meru's Air Traffic Control Technology™ also gave us switch-like
performance with no co-channel interference, even when we installed
additional APs to fill coverage gaps. And because with their single-
channel approach there's no need for channel planning, it's easy for
the BCPS technical staff to manage."
“The simplicity of the Meru solution and the ease with which we can add access points
and change the system made it the best choice for us. We can truly leverage this
technology for the benefit of our teachers and students. Our students use laptops and
we're using advanced applications such as video streaming across the wireless
network to deliver lessons."

10. Key Wireless LAN Pain Points for Educational Institutions
• Cannot connect or connections get dropped
Students • Network is slow
• Wireless doesn’t work well with video or real-time interactive apps
• Getting every student to boot and login cuts into limited class time
Teachers • Reliability and speed needed for classroom mgmt and teaching
applications
• Complex and costly to deploy, time consuming management
IT Managers • Providing wireless network access for dense populations of student
and faculty in classrooms, libraries, cafeteria, auditoriums
• Providing mission critical, converged applications over the wireless
infrastructure as part of the school services
 Requires a flexible and robust network, deliver next generation
education applications of voice, video, and data
CIOs  Providing security and communications across a highly mobile student
and faculty population
 Deliver services within a dynamic academic environment with space
constraints
• Deliver Unreliable wireless limits ROI on school technology
School/District investments (computer carts, labs, etc)
• Funding/refresh cycles can’t keep up with technology

11. If only wireless was as easy wired…
Wired Edge: Stackable Ethernet Wireless Edge: if using Microcell
Simple email and web download ok,
Runs all applications but what about other apps?
Deterministic performance and Performance and reliability are not
reliability deterministic
RF tuning and diagnosis is black magic,
Well understood “cookbooks” for
micro-cell tools ineffective
management and diagnostics
- can’t tune what you can’t predict
Predictable costs and coverage Unpredictable cost and coverage
Known formula for increasing Incremental capacity involves unknown
capacity and scale and likely costly RF redesign

12. Challenges for the Wireless Edge
How to make wireless work like wire?
Challenges Solutions
deployment, planning, analysis,
Simple changes
coverage, performance,
Predictable mobility
connectivity, performance,
Reliable diagnostics
cost effective growth as
Extensible devices, apps evolve

13. Meru Innovations -Technology Cornerstones
Abstract Stacked Channel Span
Virtual Cell Scale
Linear capacity growth
physical Capacity
network and Per
pool RF Area
resources
Optimize Provide switch
application level control
Performance over each
client
Virtual Ports
Port level control
Application Aware Network

14. Wireless LAN Virtualization: Phase I Consolidation
Meru Virtual Cell: Pooling of RF Resources into a Single Entity
 Wireless Coverage like “light bulbs”
- Where there is not enough “light”, add more access points.
- No disruption of the existing network or rewiring of surrounding “lights”
- Adjacent “lights” blend together uniformly
- If one “light” goes out, the room still has some light without interruption
Virtual Cell eliminates physical resource Seamless mobility for free;
boundaries Spatial growth without disruption

15. Wireless LAN Virtualization: Phase II Partitioning
Meru Virtual Port: Per-Device Extension of Virtual Cell
 Introduces “switch port” control and granularity to wireless
- One device does not bring down the others
- Eliminates uncontrolled sharing of network resources
 Each client appears to get its own dedicated AP throughout the network
Virtual Port provides abstraction of
network per device
Leverages Virtual Cell mobility
and predictability

16. Microcell vs Meru’s Virtual Port Analogy
Microcell: All users share the same Meru Virtual Ports: Each users has
road, no prioritization, experience their own road and their own
determined by other traffic experience

17. WLAN Virtualization
… and its benefits
Virtual Cell
Pool RF Resources
• Lowers cost of operations
• Grow as you go
• Reliability
Partition RF Resources • Seamless Mobility
Virtual Port
•Network is in control
•Highly Predictable
•Increased Security
Customize RF Resources •Improved Management &
Diagnostics
Network is customized per client
•Port-level control
•Port-level services and access

18. Evolution of Wireless LANs
Legend
Virtualization
Introduced by the generation
Built upon from older generation Coordination Virtual Port
Meru
Centralization Virtual Cell
Meru Extensibility
Standardization Microcell Predictability
Access Cisco Reliability Reliability
Fat AP Aruba Deployment Deployment
Cisco Aironet Seamless Mobility Seamless Mobility
Pre-802.11 Coverage Coverage Coverage
Proxim RangeLAN Management Management Management
Interoperability Interoperability Interoperability Interoperability
Security Security Security Security
Connectivity Connectivity Connectivity Connectivity Connectivity

19. From Microcell to Virtual Port
From no control to complete control
Microcell WLAN Virtualized WLAN
 Complex RF Planning  Zero RF Planning
 More APs  Fewer APs
 Client control  100% Network control
 No Port Isolation  Port Isolation
 Client finds its own AP
 Virtual Port follows the client

20. Top Reasons K-12 Schools and Districts choose Meru
Meru Feature Value
Virtual Cell  No RF channel planning or site survey
 Fewer APs per square foot (less wires/sw ports)
Single Channel and Channel Spans  Lowest TCO
Client Density per AP  Exceptional user experience in dense
environments (classrooms)
 1 AP per 100+ Students
 Less hardware & cost
True Air-Time-Fairness  No starved clients
 All students can connect and stay connected
 No lost class time
Best mixed mode performance  No performance penalty with b/g/n clients
 Eliminates expense to upgrade old clients
Seamless roaming  No dropped connections of roaming devices
 Eliminates frustration of dropped calls
Supports high quality video  Enables high quality video in classrooms
 Enables video surveillance of students/facilities
 Eliminates the needs of wires and wired devices
 Leverages the WLAN providing greater ROI
Provides Toll quality calls  Provides high quality, secure communications
between administration and teachers
 Provides communications during emergencies

21. WLAN Virtualization
Overcomes Challenges for the Wireless Edge
Challenges Solution: WLAN Virtualization
deployment, planning, No channel/power planning
Simple analysis, changes Network looks “invariant”
No RF or network tuning
coverage, performance, Users sandboxed
Predictable mobility Network Control
Switch-like experience
RF redundancy
connectivity, performance,
Reliable High reliability- channel layers
diagnostics Seamless Mobility, no hand-off
30% fewer APs than micro-cell
cost effective growth as Cost-effective growth via pooling
Extensible devices, apps evolve Layer channel to grow
incrementally

22. Case Study: St. Agnes Academy
Density and New Applications
Profile
 Founded in 1906, St. Agnes is a high school for
women in Houston
 Implemented one-laptop, one student policy –
with approx 1300 laptops
Challenge
 Old building with chicken wire in the walls made the
signal propagation unpredictable
 Could not support high density of simultaneous users
with predictable connectivity and performance Meru has not only given us the
capacity and performance, but
Solution it has made managing the
 Implemented Meru in 2006 to support high density network much easier than it
and new applications ever was before.
 Wireless projectors Jason Hyams,
 Wireless Video Cameras for Surveillance director of technology

23. Case Study: Baltimore County Public Schools
Video Streaming, District-wide Deployment
Profile
 171 Schools, 15 million square feet
 105,000+ students "Meru's Air Traffic Control
technology also gave us
switch-like performance
Challenge with no co-channel
interference, even when we
 Support digital media instructional tools
installed additional APs to
 High density of users in classrooms and labs fill coverage gaps.
 Support for video streaming applications
With their single-channel
approach there's no need
for channel planning, it's
Solution easy for the BCPS technical
 Implemented Meru 5-30 APs and a controller in each
staff to manage."
building starting in summery 2007
 Over 2000 Access Points have been installed by start
of 2008 school year

24. Case Study: School District of Philadelphia
Large, Distributed School District
Profile "Charged with the
fundamental mission of
 Top 10 national K-12 school district with providing our students and
273 schools and > 217,000 students teachers with state-of-the-art
Challenge computing capable of
supporting high-bandwidth
 Establish a next generation “School of The instructional applications, the
Future” District is confident that Meru
- 100% mobile teaching and learning environment Networks has established a
 Support secure, converged data, voice and framework for wireless
video networking that will
comfortably scale to satisfy
 High-performance, high density, everywhere our educational needs as
Solution demand grows.
 Meru WLAN The entire school district now
- Maximum bandwidth and highest density has an easy-to-manage,
 Application fairness — over-the air QoS scalable wireless network that
accommodates our high-
 90+ Schools with approximately 30,000 radios density demands.“
have been deployed in 2007-8. 90+ additional - Deputy CIO
schools to be deployed by September 2009

25. “With Meru's technology and 11n's performance and reliability, I'm
confident in using the wireless network not just as an adjunct to my
wired network, but as the primary network for high-stakes activities
such as student testing.”
- Brad Fischer, Director of Technology, Danville Public Schools

26. Thank You

27. Meru Addresses Education’s Most Challenging Wireless Issues
Meru Approach Other Approaches
Deployment • Single-channel eliminates complex and costly  Traditional microcell deployment requires heavy RF
RF channel planning channel planning and power management of access
• No need to re-plan the entire network to points that only last until the next move/add/change
accommodate Moves/Adds/Changes
User Density • True Air Time Fairness algorithms ensure that  Random access prevents large number of users from
all clients get high-quality performance accessing the network efficiently—only a few users
get desired performance while other experience delay
and erratic quality. The more clients, the worse the
performance
Real-time • Virtual Cell eliminates co-channel • Clients make roaming decisions between APs on
interference, coordinating all access points to different channels with Microcells. Due to air time
Applications behave as a single, distributed access point, contention, roaming times are highly variable, ranging
Support supporting seamless roaming for real-time from 100ms to seconds
applications • No upstream QoS limits support advanced
• Supports up-stream and down-stream QoS applications
required by wireless voice and video
Investment • Full backwards compatibility for a/b/g/n • Limited backwards compatibility—single B client can
• Built-in scale with channel layering capability, impact performance of G clients and same is true for
Protection allowing customers to double/triple network a/b/g clients in 802.11n networks
capacity by simply adding APs to high-use • Difficult to scale due to inherent tradeoff between
areas coverage and throughput—AP cells must be reduced
to support greater throughput but as AP cells get
smaller, channel interference among APs increases

28. Meru Has Superior WLAN Architecture
Other WLANs Meru’s Virtualized WLAN
X
Client is in Control Infrastructure
is in Control
Uncoordinated “Hub” Access Points Coordinated “Switch-like” Access Points
Unreliable Connectivity High Reliability and Performance: unique Virtual Cell™
and Virtual Port technology
 Co-Channel interference
 Manages co-channel interference
 Client is in control: Ping-pong and
sticky client issues  Infrastructure control of client associations
and handoff
 Performance Degrades with density
 Reliable performance even with density
Higher Complexity and Cost of Operations Simple Deployment and Operations
 Complex RF and power planning  No RF/channel planning
 Periodic site surveys  No need for periodic surveys
 Constant tuning of network  Wireless as a “utility”