SAN FRANCISCO — December 17, 2009 – Meraki, the cloud-based wireless networking company, today announced that Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, has installed Meraki wireless access points (APs) in the Gates Computer Science Building to provide reliable, high-performance wireless coverage for the growing number of laptops and WiFi-enabled devices in the building.  Stanford deployed several Beta features that provided greater scalability, security, and diagnostics for Meraki’s Enterprise wireless product line.  Beginning today, these features are generally available to all Enterprise customers at no additional charge.

The Gates Building is a 150,000 sq. ft. facility that houses roughly 550 faculty, staff, and students in Stanford’s Computer Science department.  Computer Services, the IT team that supports the Gates Building, deployed 15 Meraki MR14s, which are dual-radio 802.11n APs, to improve reliability and performance across the facility.  The entire installation took only four hours to deploy.

Computer Services used Meraki’s new Enterprise features to manage the Meraki network in the Gates Building.  These new features, which are now generally available to all new and existing Enterprise customers at no additional cost, include the following:

• Rogue AP Detection: Improve network security by detecting nearby APs that may be spoofing SSIDs, as well as APs that may be connected to the LAN without permission.
• Network Analytics: Generate analytics reports about the usage and reliability of a Meraki wireless network, bandwidth trends, device popularity, mobility, and more.
• 16 SSIDs: Each Meraki AP can broadcast up to 16 SSIDs.  Administrators can use these 16 SSIDs to create different wireless networks for different groups of users and devices (e.g., guests, employees, VOIP handsets, etc.).
• Event Logging: Real-time logs offer complete visibility into where, when, and how devices connect to a Meraki wireless network, reducing troubleshooting time and providing device tracking capabilities.

Miles Davis, Director of Computer Services, said the department has a challenging network environment involving, students, faculty, visitors, and even experimental robotic devices.  “We’ve got robots on their own network drops, along with a campus network for people who come in and out of the building all day,” said Davis.   “We also have people who work in the building and have wireless devices that must work all the time.”

Davis himself used the Rogue AP Detection feature to secure the network, and used Event Logging to save time providing help desk support. Davis also posted a portion of his Network Analytics report to his blog, sharing the breakdown of wireless devices in the Stanford Computer Science department.  The Apple iPhone was the most popular device, at 34.3% of all clients.  Following the iPhone was Mac OS X, at 26.8%, and Windows XP and Vista, at 27.8%.

About Meraki

Meraki offers enterprise-class wireless networks at a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional networking vendors. This is made possible by its unique cloud-based technology.  The company’s customers range from small and medium-sized businesses to global hotel chains to world-class educational institutions.  Meraki wireless networks serve millions of users on over 13,000 networks in more than 140 countries.  Meraki is located in San Francisco, California, and is funded in part by Sequoia Capital and Google. Follow Meraki on Facebook and Twitter. For more information, go to www.meraki.com.

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