We've been intrigued with Meru's technology for some time, and after a series of unsuccessful attempts to include it in product reviews, we finally got its gear into our Syracuse University Real-World Labs®. With Meru's encouragement, we tested its product head-to-head against Cisco's, sharing test results with both companies along the way to ensure our analysis was as objective as possible. During our evaluation, we talked to current and prospective Meru customers, hashed out technology issues with senior staff from both vendors, and put the products through a battery of tests, conducted in both a real-world building environment as well as in an RF isolation chamber (see "Testing: Cisco vs. Meru").
Our testing gave us a much better understanding of Meru's setup, and we were impressed by its outstanding Wi-Fi performance. When we threw a combination of wireless VoIP and conventional data traffic at Meru and Cisco gear--a scenario we feel will become increasingly common--Meru offered superior voice quality while maintaining steady data traffic flows. When we evaluated performance in a mixed mode 802.11b/802.11g environment--common today--Meru didn't let 11b traffic cripple our 11g clients, as is typical of most competitive offerings. And while our test bed was too small to systematically evaluate roaming performance, we're convinced that Meru's single channel architecture offers advantages there as well.
But that's only half the story.
Although our performance results support Meru's claims, we spent a lot of time scratching our heads, wondering how the company does it. We've worked with 802.11 for a long time and have a solid understanding of the limitations of the spec's shared-media CSMA/CA architecture. The spec's lack of QoS capabilities is an acknowledged shortcoming, and though the 802.11e enhancements address many of these drawbacks, this standard is not broadly implemented. Yet Meru delivers many of these capabilities, using standard 802.11 clients.
Unfortunately, the company hasn't been entirely forthcoming with details related to how it achieves its results--presumably because it's Meru's equivalent of the formula for Coca-Cola.
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