Meru Networks plans to ship beta software next month that lets its year-old 802.11n wireless LAN gear support the company's heralded Virtual Cell technology. That might sound anticlimactic to those who assumed that Virtual Cell was already a fait accompli in all Meru equipment, including its Draft 2.0 802.11n-compatible AP300 product family.

However, Meru’s 11n products, announced in April 2007, and others have been shipping minus the Virtual Cell feature.

“Organizations were hungry for 11n and didn’t have huge mobile needs,” explained Rachna Ahlawat, VP of strategic marketing during a recent exclusive briefing at Meru offices. She indicated that on Meru’s development priority list, getting 802.11n’s increased throughput and capacity to market trumped Virtual Cell, a highly touted feature in the company’s Air Traffic Control system management software.

Virtual Cell uses a single MAC address for all access points in the network so client devices only have one visible AP to associate with, thereby eliminating inter-AP handoffs and associated delays. The Meru controller decides which APs serve clients that come online and move throughout the network.

“We sell a variety of products to meet different customer needs,” added Kamal Anand, senior VP of marketing and corporate strategy at Meru. As such, Virtual Cell and other features of Meru’s Air Traffic Control software, such as Meru’s own deterministic QoS and Airtime Fairness capabilities, are available in some Meru products but not in others to address the price sensitivities of certain market segments, he said.

The company’s AP200 802.11a/b/g AP family has been the only product to support Virtual Cell until Meru System Director software Release 3.5-48 became available earlier this month. At that time, Meru added Virtual Cell support for its AP150, an 802.11a/b/g AP targeted at low-density, price-sensitive applications. The company’s RS4000 802.11a/b/g four-radio AP switch and OAP180 outdoor AP do not support Virtual Cell.

Virtual Cell-capable beta software, Release 3.6, for the AP300 11n family is slated to ship June 23, with general availability to follow a few weeks later, said Ahlawat. The four-radio, Draft 2.0 11n AP440, announced this spring, is slated to support Virtual Cell, as well, when it ships in the third quarter.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.