Meru Networks

As we all know, IT technology is growing rapidly. And in this business world, there is a huge competition between companies. We all know about big network system manufacturers like Cisco Systems, Extreme networks, Avaya, Alcatel Lucent, 3Com and so on, but when I was going to setup a new enterprise wireless network, I encountered a new name and a new technology. I'm talking about Meru Networks. I was impressed by their innovation and technology. They use a new approach a new wireless network architecture that brings advantages over traditional wireless networks. I tell you briefly some of them, but if you like to know more use the bottom links.

• No need to channel planning anymore
• No recognizable hand shaking in moving from one zone to another
• Using virtual cell technology
• Up to 2-3 times faster than microcell raw capacity in 2.4Ghz and even more in 5Ghz
• Good bandwidth with even more users
• Better performance in transferring  voice and data simultaneously.
• Centralized management
• Easy troubleshooting
• More scalable 
• and much more ...  

I ain't gonna go through details here, but here is a clip for quick overview. In this clip Dr. Bharghavan (CTO and Founder of Meru's networks) gives a simple explanation behind Meru's unique approach to managing APs and wireless clients. This is the core of Meru's technology enabling the concept of a virtual cell and flowing on to a virtual port for every wireless client, which delivers switch-like, fair and predictable performance to the wireless lan (as compared to hub-like performance of traditional legacy micro-cell vendors such as Cisco, Aruba, HP etc)



And hey it's really interesting, take a look at the link below. It's about a head to head wireless network and product review and test between Cisco Systems and Meru Networks.

http://www.networkcomputing.com/wireless/cisco-vs-meru-the-vendors-speak.php

And here is the official Meru networks website:
www.merunetworks.com/

If you are up to deploy a new enterprise wireless network, so take a look at Meru to see what they have to offer.

Centralized Network Management

since I recently became a network administrator I was looking for the best centralized network management solution . and since all devices in our network is made by Cisco, I went to the Cisco website. That helped me! I found a program called Cisco Network Assistant (CNA). I even didn't know what was the devices IPs! but simply by providing the subnet mask CNA searched the entire network and it detected Cisco devices after approximately 26 minutes. after that simply I created a community with all detected devices. simple and beautiful!

It is really nice to manage the whole network just from a single workstation. but it would be better if we had multiple monitors connected to that PC. one for monitoring and the other for navigating and configuring and remote control and other operations.

CNA can configure, monitor and troubleshoot the devices in your network. Also I think I need to use MRTG and SmokePing too. both are free and very useful. and both of them are platform independent and they work with RRD and some Perl components. maybe I'll talk about configuring MRTG and SmokePing latter.

there are many tools out there. and if you know about other handy network tools, please let me know.