Meru Networks, a leader in Wi-Fi networking, today announced Wi-Fi Alliance certification and general availability (GA) of the AP832, the Wi-Fi industry's fastest access point. The AP832 features a dual radio 802.11ac design delivering up to three times the performance of 802.11n access points. Unlike most other 802.11ac solutions, the AP832 operates on 802.3af power, eliminating the need for costly Ethernet switch upgrades. Meru customers also report that 802.11n devices run up to 30 percent faster on the AP832 than on 802.11n access points.

"The additional capacity, coverage and device density-handling capability that the AP832 provides, makes a real difference in the way our guests use the onboard Wi-Fi network," said Greg Martin, IT director for Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. "We use Meru's AP832 as the primary onboard wireless access point. It easily handles the three or more mobile devices that each of our guests carry, along with streaming video and all the shipboard applications that we depend on.""Students now typically have between three and five mobile devices with them, any or all of which they use for streaming voice and video, file transfer and other bandwidth-intensive applications," said João Paulo Cavaco, director of information services at the University of Lisbon. "The Meru AP832 helps us ensure that we have the capacity, in addition to the coverage, that we need to ensure that the students have a high-quality mobile experience anywhere on our campus."

802.11ac adoption will be driven by the quickly-growing number of mobile devices, the BYOD trend and high-bandwidth applications such as HD video, video conferencing and cloud-based services and storage. Adoption of devices such as smart phones and tablets supporting 802.11ac is growing quickly.

"As Wi-Fi becomes the primary access network for many schools, hospitals, hotels, and other businesses, the 1.3 Gbps-per-radio capacity of 802.11ac will enable Wi-Fi to deliver even more capacity to these enterprises," said Rohit Mehra, vice president, network infrastructure, IDC. "Meru's ability to support two 802.11ac radios operating at 80 MHz in the 5 GHz range on 802.3af power is very promising in giving customers the full benefit of the standard."

Wi-Fi Alliance Certification
The Meru AP832 has received Wi-Fi Alliance certification. The Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-Fi CERTIFIED is a program for testing products to the 802.11 industry standards for interoperability, security, easy installation, and reliability. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED logo is an assurance that the Wi-Fi Alliance has tested a product in numerous configurations and with a diverse sampling of other devices to ensure compatibility with other Wi-Fi CERTIFIED equipment that operates in the same frequency band.

"Our customers have been very enthusiastic about end-users' feedback on performance of their Meru 802.11ac networks since we launched the AP832 as a controlled release in July," said Manish Rai, vice president of corporate marketing at Meru. "We are eager to bring the benefits of the AP832 to the broader market with the general availability announced today."