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Wireless Network Head-to-Head: Cisco Vs. Meru: Page 4 of 15

Our first round of late-night tests ended with results that failed to meet Meru's expectations. Our second round of tests used an updated configuration script. It failed as well. The third time proved to be a charm, backed by the Meru engineer that had flown in to oversee the testing, the system performed as expected.

Meru's explanation for our first two failed attempts was a defective AP, and we have no reason to doubt that. But the process of troubleshooting was frustrating nonetheless, and it shook our confidence in the company just a bit. A pre-release code bug that resulted in poor performance with WPA2-PSK (Preshared Key) encryption enabled was corrected.

Of equal concern was Meru's responsiveness. Throughout the process, seemingly simple requests for new hardware, updated software, technical support and customer references resulted in lengthy delays and, in some cases, no response at all. And because we weren't able to talk to customers that were pushing large amounts of traffic across a Meru infrastructure, we weren't able to assess whether our lab findings could be generalized to a true production enterprise environment.

Despite a lack of help from the company, we did manage to talk--off the record--to a couple of Meru customers. Both expressed a high level of satisfaction with the company's products, but neither had installations that let us fully assess Meru's performance and scalability claims.

As is normal when we conduct head-to-head tests, we involved both Meru and Cisco in the testing process. As we collected performance results, we discussed them with both companies, and we pressed Cisco to provide an explanation for why Meru performed so much better on several tests.