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schaps
Premium Member
join:2004-01-15
Saint Paul, MN

schaps

Premium Member

open-mesh in a school?

Any opinions about me getting 20 of these units to deploy in a school? I can't find much info on how much traffic they can handle, though I 'assume' that the meshing capability distributes the load. We use laptop carts, and we occasionally have three carts (~75 laptops) in one small area, and the current wireless system chokes, crawls and drops when that happens.

Nearly all of my deployed units can be gateways, that is, connected to the network by wire, not just acting as a repeater. Not having to worry about channels and interference from adjacent base stations would be a dream. Being able to drop in an additional self-configuring unit to an area when I think it might need it on a given day would be great.

But I am concerned that the amount of traffic generated by our laptop use will overwhelm the mesh - we're talking network-authenticated users with home folders and using streaming video. I am actually OK with slow-downs, they are much preferable to full network dropouts that we currently get.

So, anyone with experience and an opinion?

Thx
jschnip
join:2008-05-20

jschnip

Member

If you are looking for a school solution - with lots of large groups of users, and you don't want to worry about channel planning - you should look at Meru Networks. Meru doesn't use a mesh, but offers single channel, high density, flexible re-configuration options. If you have more questions, we'd be glad to answer them or get you a demo, contact available at ovationnetworks.com

As far as Meraki/Open-Mesh - we're not aware of anyone who's tested such a dense environment - we also have not tested the load balancing capability, however we are working on a solution using them, and may have some test results once that is complete. Its a great, cost effective solution - however I am not expecting to see the same performance (throughput, density, seamless roaming, and load balancing) that we get from our Meru based networks.