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| Meru Networks Brings Virtualization to Wireless LANs Meru Networks has brought the techniques of virtualization to its enterprise wireless LAN products, allowing an optimization of radio frequency (RF) resources that raises WLAN performance and reliability to wireline levels, while reducing the price of wireless networking to a fraction of its wired equivalent. The new "virtual port" technology, available now on Meru products, for the first time provides every client device with its own dedicated virtual wireless network. Just as with dedicated ports on a wired switch, enterprises gain control over the wireless resources allocated to each client, lowering both initial expenditures and ongoing management costs. The increased control realized with virtual port technology is especially important as wireless becomes the primary edge technology for network connectivity in an increasing number of environments, and as new and more diverse wireless devices, based on the high-performance 802.11n Wi-Fi standard, proliferate throughout the enterprise. Virtualization technology has two chief components: pooling and partitioning. In 2003 Meru pioneered the concept of wireless "virtual cells", which enable all wireless access points (APs) in an organization to share a common, pooled radio channel resource – a technique that removes the discontinuity of physical boundaries between access points, eliminating co-channel interference and disruptive "handoffs" as clients roam across the network. Because the channel-sharing APs in the Meru architecture are turned up to full power, up to one-third fewer APs are required than in the "micro cell" architectures of other WLAN vendors – a major saving on capital equipment costs. With the introduction of virtual port technology, the common pooled resources of virtual cells can be partitioned into multiple virtual WLANs, with a unique virtual WLAN mapped to each device for as long as that device is connected to the network. As with wired switches, the network has full control over the resources and services allocated to a given device. The user, "sandboxed" in his own virtual WLAN, has a wired-like experience, with full access to appropriate resources yet protected from disruption by other users' network demands. Constraining users to their own dedicated virtual WLANs allows the network to control client behavior in ways that proprietary client driver extensions and radio management technologies cannot, yet requires no added client software. As with virtual cell technology, virtual port technology is fully based on IEEE 802.11 standards. With Meru's virtual cell architecture, all client devices saw a single, common IEEE 802.11 Basic Service Set Identifier, or BSSID (the MAC, or Media Access Control, address in Wi-Fi networks). With the new virtual port technology, every client device has its own unique BSSID. This enables the partitioning of pooled RF resources into virtual ports, eliminating "lowest common denominator" contention among devices and enabling the enterprise to exercise precise control over the uplink and downlink performance of each device – similar to the per-port control in wired switches. This performance remains constant for a laptop, phone or other wireless device no matter which physical AP its packets are passing through. Segregation of a client's network access also means significant enhancements for WLAN security and privacy. Multicast traffic intended for one client cannot be overheard or altered by others. Similarly, one client's bad behavior (e.g., the inadvertent launching of a denial-of-service attack) has no impact on other clients. And since network problems can be isolated to specific client links, debugging can be done on a client-by-client basis in real time, without disrupting the rest of the network. Virtual port technology is included in Meru's System Director 3.6 software, which is available now. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Computing News :: home page |