The WLAN cloud-management leader adds significant improvements, and gives away some software you might want to take a look at
Meraki, the enterprise-class WLAN systems vendor best known for their cloud-based system management (they sell that part of the solution as a service), has introduced a couple of new capabilities that enhance their competitive positioning and also address two key 2010 themes for business Wi-Fi installations.
The first new capability is Meraki Traffic Shaper, adding functionality that we view as critical in larger deployments. Every vendor applies their own philosophy to radio resource management and related traffic-management decisions, and Meraki has taken the approach of a form of deep-packet inspection, with traffic analysis down to the level of an individual client or application. Policies can then be applied to limit or augment specific types of traffic. Because Meraki uses a distributed architecture, it’s not much effort to gather the data, which can then be forwarded and centrally analyzed in the cloud. Thus there’s no performance hit, unless, of course, network managers want to apply one – too much YouTube going on? You get the idea. And because data from their more than 15,000 customers can be gathered (they’re not looking at specific traffic, mind you, just patterns), their ability to tune policies could be significant – I’m looking forward to hearing more about this as the service is rolled out.
The next addition is spectral analysis in the form of Meraki Auto RF. A number of vendors have already announced this capability, which, again, I view as a requirement going forward. Meraki, however, does not apply a custom spectral-analysis chip here; rather, they use the innate capabilities of the Atheros 9200-series of Wi-Fi chips. And, as is the case with Traffic Shaper, the cloud-based management capabilities can use spectral data to further optimize radio configuration.
And, finally, Meraki rolled out three free tools, available even to non-Meraki users: a Web-based Stumbler discovery/analysis tool, including a version that runs on Android 2.0; a Mapper heat-mapping site-survey tool, and a Client Insight analysis tool (this one currently in beta). All of these look more than interesting, and I’m looking forward to giving them a through run-through.
Meraki has done very well while remaining perhaps a bit below the day-to-day industry radar. Their key advantage is low entry cost and a focus on selling through distribution, making their products easy to buy, and centralized management, making their installations easy to operate, even in highly-distributed situations. The new product additions add some excitement, important functionality, and, ideally, a bit more visibility to a very interesting player in the enterprise-class space.
