While we’re still waiting for 802.11n to be approved, but we’re happily using it (with some consequences that devices don’t interoperate), the IEEE has ratified the 802.11r Wifi roaming standard, aka Fast Basic Service Set Transition. A pretty significant standard actually, especially with municipal/community Wifi in mind, covering large areas.
802.11r is a standard that lets Wifi devices roam quickly between access points, in less than 50ms, quick enough to keep a voice call alive. This much improves VoIP over Wifi and mobile browsing with minimal disruptions caused by changing access points and channels. Current roaming delays in 802.11 networks average in the hundreds of milliseconds, up to several seconds, as these 802.11 standards were originally defined with single access points in mind. While some have proclaimed 802.11 a/b/g/n… to be near-dead in favour of 3G mobile broadband or WIMax, this 802.11r standard proves it’s still alive and kicking.
Read on at DailyWireless.
Network World describes the situation on some university campusses, where more and more students pack a laptop and other wifi enabled devices, and are streaming youtube and personal media over the network.
Early WLANs focused on growing the number of access points to cover a given area. But today, many wireless administrators are focusing more attention on scaling capacity. That focus is a broad one, calling for a deeper understanding of what access points are capable of, and paying more attention to scaling back-end systems, servers and networks.
Multimedia use is surging, and 802.11n is expected to make it surge still more. All these universities are configuring their wireless LANS for multicast support, to minimize bandwidth demands where possible. Users in effect tune into a single multicast stream (analogous to viewing broadcast TV) rather than each one receiving his or her own separate, unicast stream.
Read on at Network World.
Wednesday, Aug 13th, 2008
Categories: Meraki
Meraki is introducing more changes:
- Meraki Indoor
- End of life of the Standard Edition line of products
- Prices now start at $149
The Meraki Indoor improves upon the Meraki Mini by adding built-in signal strength LEDs, a hardware watchdog for withstanding power fluctuations and a sleeker enclosure with a built-in antenna…
We are also announcing the end of life of our Standard Edition (ad-supported) products, which will no longer be available to new customers after January 31, 2009…
As an existing Standard Edition customer, your networks will continue to operate normally and Meraki will continue providing hosted services for the lifetime of the product. As part of our streamlined product offering, your networks will have certain features enabled in Dashboard which were previously only available in Pro Edition, including custom images on splash pages and unlimited device whitelisting.