Hobart and William Smith Colleges selects Meru for its Campus Wireless Deployment Plan

Meru Enables HWS to Meet Growing Demand for Reliable Wireless Connectivity

Sunnyvale, CA– February 21, 2005

Meru Networks, the global leader in converged voice and data WLANs, today announced that Hobart and William Smith Colleges (HWS) has chosen Meru Networks as it plans to deliver state of the art wireless access to students and faculty throughout its 170-acre campus in Geneva, N.Y. The Meru WLAN System is currently being deployed in new residence buildings, a new coffee shop, dining facilities, and new mobile Geoscience labs to meet the growing demand for anytime, anywhere access among HWS students, faculty, and staff. Over the next several years, HWS plans to continue expanding wireless coverage across campus to create a highly connected environment for its 2200-member community.

HWS initial pilot Wi-Fi rollout in 2002 using traditional WLAN equipment was postponed due to a number of technical challenges. The Information Technology team was unable to provide complete coverage in large locations such as the library due to interference that resulted from overlapping access point (AP) coverage areas. Similarly, in small classrooms where a single AP was deployed, the increasing numbers of users quickly overwhelmed the AP’s ability to maintain quality connections.

After evaluating the Meru WLAN system, HWS was convinced that it had found the appropriate solution for its campus-wide WLAN deployment. By leveraging Meru’s unique Air Traffic Control Technology, which manages contention with time-based traffic controls, HWS was able to manage co-channel interference, improve coverage, and reliably deliver high performance for an ever-growing number of users and applications. In addition, Meru has enabled HWS to eliminate complex RF planning and simplify on-going management.

“The Meru WLAN system dramatically improved our wireless LAN operations by simplifying planning, deployment, and management—thereby saving us time and money,” said Mike Ruiz, Network and Enterprise Systems Engineer at HWS. “The system’s ease of management will allow us to rapidly address a planned increase of requests for wireless connectivity.””

Only Meru’s Wireless LAN system optimizes quality of service on a per-user basis, making it an ideal choice for IP voice, rich media, and other demanding applications where reliable service quality is crucial.

“As the only system in the market to adequately address service level for wireless users, the Meru WLAN System is enabling HWS to deploy a wireless infrastructure that will fully support any of its current and future applications for any user population, said Kamal Anand, vice president of marketing at Meru Networks. “At Meru, we don’t just make wireless connectivity work; we make it work with the reliability, performance, and ease of deployment that make pervasive networks practical and affordable.”

About Meru Networks, Inc.

Meru Networks is the wireless LAN performance leader, and makes the only enterprise WLAN infrastructure that delivers the service reliability, scalability, security, and ease of use that are essential for pervasive wireless deployments. Offering superior voice performance and subscriber density, Meru’s Wireless LAN System is deployed in major Fortune 500 accounts, universities, and healthcare organizations. Meru’s unique Air Traffic Control technology provides predictable bandwidth and over-the-air, application-specific QoS to support a wide range of current and future wireless applications. Meru, founded in 2002, is based in Sunnyvale, California. For more information on Meru Networks and its products, visit www.merunetworks.com or call (408) 215-5300.

About Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Hobart and William Smith Colleges are coordinate, private, liberal arts institutions located in Geneva, N.Y. The Colleges have one of the nation’s top study abroad programs and are noted for their dedication to community service. Home to three Rhodes Scholars, Hobart and William Smith provide an interdisciplinary education, where learning is reinforced through on-campus academic centers and initiatives such as the Finger Lakes Institute, the Fisher Center for the Study of Women and Men, and the President’s Forum Lecture Series. A full 75 percent of HWS students are engaged in some form of undergraduate research; many get published or present their findings before professional and trade organizations such as the National Conference for Undergraduate Research.