MiFi – WiFi that goes with you

Benjamin Ellis — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:39:25 +0000

There’s a gadget that has had our interest for a little while now. The first encounter was in St James’ Park, where this wallet sized device was enabling the real-time uploading of photos in the middle of a picnic. Vodafone has now launched the Novatel Wireless Intelligent Mobile Hotspot 2352 – or MiFi to its friends – available on a data package from now.

Best described as a Mobile Broadband Hotspot, the MiFi acts as an 802.11 (WiFi) access point for up to five devices, which it then connects to the Internet via a mobile data connection – the MiFi has a SIM card tucked away in the battery compartment. In our trials, the device lasts up to 4 hours on a single charge, which is reasonably impressive for an access point. It is small and light (it tucks easily into a pocket in a jacket or a bag). Switch on, then fire up your laptop/iPod Touch/WiFi device of choice and surf the net anywhere up to 10 metres away from where the MiFi has been put down.

The MiFi supports a reasonable selection of 802.11 security features, to limit its use to selected devices, where that is a requirement. It also supports a MicroSD card (which can be up to 16GB), enabling local file sharing via a web interface. A very nice additional feature that boosts its usefulness on the road. The connection speeds (via the mobile network ) are up to 5.7 Mbps on the uplink and 7.2 Mbps on the downlink, which puts it firmly in the broadband space, with very attractive upload speeds too.

Initially the MiFi is available from Vodafone in Germany, Romania and Spain. The device seems a good fit for:

Mobile teams – enabling collaboration and share data access.
Road warriors with more than one device requiring mobile data access.
Small group meetings in venues without WiFi.
Telemetry/mobile monitoring with WiFi enabled sensors.
Backup connectivity for small offices that are WiFi/DSL based.

Going All 802.11n With Meru Networks

Benjamin Ellis — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:04:32 +0000

Next in the series of Interviews from IP08 is Meru Networks. US-Based Meru sits in the unusual situation of being a company that no-one has heard of, but everyone talks about. I’ll explain why in a bit, but first a little background on this wireless player.

David Kelly - Meru Networks

Meru has a strong engineering bent and a strategic outlook – Gartner has placed them in the visionary section of their magic quadrant for WLAN. Meru recently started to build out their presence in the UK and Europe, hiring a seasoned team of professionals to help them out. They’ll need them, as they have a fight on their hands: The age-old Cisco versus best of breed player battle. It is a familiar battle. When you have a networking requirement the default networking vendor always has a big head start. A point not lost on David Kelly, Meru’s head of Sales in EMEA, and former Cisco old hand himself.

Meru have differentiated themselves by focussing on large, high-density WiFi deployments. Their technology reduces the issues of PCs handing off from one access point to another. You can argue the benefits of that for data, after all, how often do you walk around whilst surfing with your PC? But for Voice over WiFi it become more essential. Even when PCs are static, there are benefits in balancing load across different access points.

So, why are Meru both unheard of and much talked about? The answer lies in their users base, which tends to be formed from people who are experienced WiFi users. The majority of people I encounter who are into their ‘second phase’ of deployment are aware of Meru and considering them. This makes sense when you think about it: For a small scale deployment, there are a large range of vendors who can provide a working solution. When it comes to scaling, it is a completely different matter.

Meru have a big push on 802.11n technology. 802.11n has been spinning around the standards bodies for far too long, but will hopefully emerge, fully ratified, this year. The general view, including that of Meru Networks, is that any changes to the standard between now and then will be addressable via a software upgrade.

I’d always viewed 802.11n as a consumer technology, because that is where the bulk of the noise about it has been :- extending WiFi range in the home, dealing with interference etc… However the technology is just as applicable in the Enterprise, and this is where the Meru folks are pushing it.

By deploying access points delivering standard 802.11b/g, which can be converted to n, you get a degree of future proofing. The Meru solution is nice in that you can use b, g or n and still deliver the appropriate speed to users (it isn’t dragged down by the lowest common denominator).

Going back to Gartner again, they position Meru as a 4th generation, single cell architecture, with the intelligence in the access point. This takes away the drop off during access point hand over, and allows the layering of networks (read Gartner’s full piece here).

Meru’s David Kelly was keen to stress their push into the UK and Europe. The company has a strong customer base in the US, including education (where user mobility is exceptionally high), health care and government. They are now repeating that success over here.

“Unleash the users and let them go,” says David. And why not? The traditional security concerns about WiFi are receding, with enhanced encryption and dedicated security capabilities such as Meru’s “AirShield 2.0″ (I’m not making that name up! read for yourself).

Meru use air time fairness to share bandwidth between different users, protecting VoFi (voice over WiFi) calls, and controlling would-be bandwidth hogs. Applications also include retail and distribution, as more and more data terminals have WiFi capability built in. If you are looking to refresh your WiFi deployment, or going straight to large scale WiFi use, Meru Networks is definitely worth checking out.

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MiFi – WiFi that goes with you

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