meraki

Now that you've gotten yourself a new ride by trading in your clunker, it's time to do the same with your wireless router.

Meraki, the first networking vendor to bring the Wireless-N standard outdoors earlier this year, launched Wednesday its Cash for Wireless LAN Clunkers promotion campaign.

The program is for those who want to upgrade their legacy 802.11b/g network (which caps at 54Mbps) to the 802.11n (which caps at 300Mbps) network with a Meraki wireless access point. The promotion includes a $150 credit for each access point traded in for one made by Meraki. … Read more

Meraki, a known mesh network provider, released Tuesday its first Wireless Census for North America and the results, though dramatic, seem nothing of a surprise. Basically, there has been a huge increase in the number of wireless-capable devices, among which Apple's handheld devices had the biggest jump.

The Meraki Wireless Census surveyed 10,000 randomly selected Meraki access points deployed in North America for two 24-hour periods: June 2, 2008, and June 1, 2009. The study measured the number of distinct client devices that sent probe requests in each 24-hour period. The purpose of the survey was to identify … Read more

Wireless network provider Meraki announced Tuesday that its Wi-Fi access point equipment has received USDA Rural Development Acceptance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service (RUS).

What this means is that municipalities and counties can qualify for stimulus funding to buy Meraki (and other vendors') products to bring broadband access to educational institutions and under-served areas of the U.S., including rural communities.

One could argue that there are more important things that can be brought to rural areas, but the government program is designed not only to stimulate the economy but also increase the use of technology across a user base that is under-served by technology.

A Wi-Fi cloud not only brings the Internet, but also education, entertainment, and low-cost communication through e-mail and voice over Internet Protocol. … Read more

Known for offering one of the biggest wireless mesh networks for regular hot spot users and being the first that brought Wireless-N to the outdoors, Meraki on Monday showed that it can also mean serious business with its new enterprise class wireless local area network (WLAN) solutions.

WLAN is nothing new. Buy a wireless router to set up at home and you have one. However, it's a lot more complicated and expensive when it comes to the enterprise-class WLAN, where both large coverage and high performance are needed.

What Meraki introduced offers just that, plus lower price points. For … Read more

Though Wireless-N (an 802.11n draft standard that offers throughput speeds up to 300Mbps or faster) has been used in home and small-office routers for a long time, routers for outdoor hot spots are still mostly based on the 802.11g standard that caps at 54Mbps. This is primarily because the 802.11n hasn't been ratified yet.

Nonetheless, Wireless-N standard's proven superiority over 802.11g both in throughput and range means hot-spot equipment makers and providers can't ignore it any longer.

Meraki, arguably the biggest provider of outdoor Wi-Fi mesh services, on Tuesday announced its very first … Read more

Wireless equipment maker Meraki is helping make universal broadband a reality.

The company announced Thursday that it's working with a nonprofit called OneEconomy, which focuses on closing the digital divide by targeting low-income housing. Using Meraki's technology, OneEconomy will deliver affordable broadband via Wi-Fi to more than 100,000 families in the U.S. and, eventually, around the world over the next two years.

Meraki and OneEconomy will launch their partnership at San Francisco's largest housing development, which has more than 2,200 residents. AT&T is providing the DSL service.

OneEconomy provides affordable broadband to … Read more

Mesh Wi-Fi provider Meraki is going green with a new solar-powered repeater.

The company, which builds low-cost and easy-to-manage Wi-Fi gear, said the Meraki Solar Wi-Fi repeater will ship starting December 4. The price of the solar repeater costs between $749 and $1,499.

Sanjit Biswas, co-founder and CEO of Meraki, said he expects customers in developing markets, where power infrastructure is not reliable or nonexistent, to be especially interested in the product. But he said that there has also been interest among customers here in the U.S. and other developed markets.

"Some people might want to set … Read more

Update 1:20 p.m. PDT with comment from San Francisco's mayor.

Meraki, the San Francisco company that is providing free Wi-Fi to San Franciscans, is teaming up with the city to bring free Internet access to low-income housing projects as part of its plan to unwire every neighborhood in San Francisco.

On Tuesday, Meraki held a press conference with the city's mayor, Gavin Newsom, to kick off its latest initiative, which will add wireless coverage to 12 low-income housing projects in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. Meraki also plans to provide Wi-Fi Internet access to low-income … Read more

There is no business model behind it, but mesh Wi-Fi company Meraki is offering free Wi-Fi access to San Francisco, one neighborhood at a time, as I discovered when I passed by the company's folksy demo table at my local farmers' market last month (see report from local newspaper). But Meraki is not in the business of just blasting money out the door, which it appears to be doing in San Francisco, and there is a method to this program.

Meraki's business is actually quite straightforward: it sells wide-area Wi-Fi network hardware, and provides the management consoles to … Read more