Nicolaus Copernicus University, in Torun, Poland, has adopted a wireless network from Meru Networks to provide secure wireless Internet access without dropped connections for students and faculty.

The university, known in Polish as Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika (UMK), is replacing stand-alone wireless access points on its campus with a centrally-controlled Meru wireless network.

"The university's network has around 400 users a day and more than 2000 regular users a month," said Tomasz Wolniewicz, director of information and communications technology. "We needed a network that would give access to that number of students without breaks in service."

The university had deployed about 90 stand-alone wireless APs from 3Com since 2005 to cover open access areas such as libraries, halls and cafeterias. Since then, laptop use has grown rapidly, and wireless access has doubled in the last year alone, with new arrivals placing heavy demands on the network. "We can get up to 40 new users every day," said Wolniewicz. "The old network was not able to cope. Users were noticing breaks in service of up to several seconds when they would roam the campus and their laptops switched between one access point and another."

Additionally, the legacy network would not support new applications the university was considering, such as voice over wireless IP, so last year the university decided to upgrade its wireless LAN infrastructure. It tested equipment from Meru, Cisco, Aruba, Trapeze, 3Com and Siemens, and in particular measured handoff, the break in transmission when a client moves from one AP to another. "In our tests, the Meru system eliminated this break," said Wolniewicz. These results are being shared with other universities through the Polish academic network consortium Pionier (www.pionier.gov.pl).

Today the university's WLAN covers various academic departments as well as the library and administration buildings. The network uses 65 Meru AP200 access points supporting the IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards and an MC3000 controller which provides the centralized intelligence to easily deploy and manage large-scale WLANs. The Meru network is being supplied by the Konsorcjum FEN in cooperation with its partner Poltel.

UMK's network was the first in Poland to connect to the international secure Eduroam system, which provides user authentication for wireless LANs in educational establishments across Europe.

In Meru's virtualized WLAN architecture, a single channel is selected for use by all access points enterprise-wide, and a dedicated "virtual port" is assigned to each client device to maximize performance, reliability, and enterprise control over wireless resources. Additional channels can be layered as more capacity is required. In contrast, legacy WLAN systems from other vendors use a "micro cell" approach, which assigns different radio channels to many small adjacent AP cells to ensure that no two APs use the same channel in the same place. This requires precise and time-consuming channel planning and AP power adjustments to work well, making it difficult to load-balance in dense environments, and limiting future network expansion.

About Nicolaus Copernicus University

Nicolaus Copernicus University (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu, UMK), in Torun Poland, was founded in 1945. It was named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who was born in Torun in 1473, and launched the Scientific Revolution by placing the sun at the center of the solar system. The university is the largest in Northwest Poland, and has 40,000 students and 4000 staff. The majority of its 15 faculties are located in a campus on the outskirts of Torun, while some are in the historic center of Torun. For more information, visit www.umk.pl/en/.

About Meru Networks

Founded in 2002, Meru Networks develops and markets wireless LAN infrastructure solutions that use virtualization to deliver pervasive, high-fidelity wireless service for business-critical voice, video and data applications. The company first introduced its award-winning virtual cell wireless architecture in 2003, and Meru products embody a complete departure from typical hub-based WLAN approaches, offering a wireless solution with levels of performance, reliability, security and cost-effectiveness previously found only in wired networking environments. Meru's solutions have been adopted in all major industry vertical markets, including Fortune 500 enterprises, healthcare, education, retail, manufacturing, hospitality and government. Meru is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with offices in London, Paris and Stockholm, and operations in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. For more information, visit www.merunetworks.com.