"kdw" <k.willey@nvrh.org> hath wroth:

>Yes, I read the article on the Meru/Cisco test a week ago. I asked one
>of Meru's sales reps about it and asked him to send me documentation on
>the companies response. Have not seen the documentation as of yet. His
>personal response was the testers did not have a good understanding of
>802.11 standards. No, I am not that gullable.

The official response was something like "Cisco does not understand
802.11". Nice try.

>I was intrigued by Meru's
>1 channel virtual cell as it could address some of the issues I have in
>this installation.

See:
<http://www.extricom.com>
which has a similar system called "blanket coverage".

>Our buildings walls are not very RF friendly thus we
>have had to place APs in all most every room making channelization and
>client hand-offs a real problem. While we are in a rural area with no
>other surrounding WLANs so monopolizing airtime migh not be an issue
>however, the company we choose needs to establish a "trusting work
>relationship" and as of right now at least, I am having second
>thoughts about trusting a company which as you said; "got caught
>screwing with the 802.11 duration value."

Well, what you're apparently looking for is a seamless roaming system.
You don't need a centralized ethernet switch to do that but it is
easier that way. At this time, roaming is essentially controlled by
the client, not the access point. The assorted marketing buzzword
infested solutions transfer control to the access point. It can do
that by simply reporting a lousy SNR from the wireless client, which
will force the wireless client to scan for a different access point.
There are other tricks, but that's the easiest. I'm not sure this is
a critical requirement as there are clients that are becoming smart
about roaming. Intel Proset and Broadcom 4.x client have settings
that adjust how agressive a client should be sticking to one
particular access point. Also, my experience with assorted small
offices show that few wireless clients really move around. If your
offices are really that RF hostile that the signal is lost when moving
between rooms, you have the ideal situation, where the client simply
re-associates on loss of signal when going from one room to another.

>Please let me know if you hear anything else
>kdw

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558