October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA VoWLAN Trends and Opportunities Kamal Anand Vice President Marketing Meru Networks
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Wireless LAN Evolution Number of Clients and Coverage Applications Products / Technology , Web Stand-alone Access Points Stand AloneMulti-site , Web from different locations Centralized security and management High Density, Application QoS, Transparent mobility Voice and Data Business applications Primary connectivity Pervasive
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Why Voice Over Wireless LAN? Compelling Business Case for Enterprises Reduced Cell Bills Total Benefits Of WLANs that carry Voice + Data Lower costs for computer moves, adds, changes (MAC) Productivity Improvement from on-campus voice mobility Lower wiring costs for data and voice + Lower Phone Move/Change costs , Web access Mobility Enterprise Benefits from WLANs Total Benefits of Data-only WLANs
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Industry Moving to Support Enterprise Voice over Wi-Fi Wireless Built-into Compute Devices Laptops PDAs VoIP Has Achieved Momentum Strong growth in VoIP Lines and VoIP traffic Good Quality & Features Available in Softphones Laptops, Desktops PDAs Voice Devices Coming to Market only Phones Dual mode (Cellular, W-iFi) Custom devices Source: In-Stat; IDC VoWLAN
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Where is Wi-Fi Voice Getting Considered? Traditional Deployments Hospitals with phones and “hands-free” badges Manufacturing / Warehouses Emerging Applications Remote Offices –Complete “Unwired” offices reduce costs Enterprise-Campus –Reduced on-campus cell bills with dual-mode phones –Improved availability on campus and on remote sites Hotels / hospitality –For staff communications Carrier Offerings for Enterprises –In conjunction with IP-Centrex based services
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Why Don’t we See Much More Widespread Deployment Today? 1.Not Many Handsets Available 2.Handsets are Expensive 3.Wi-Fi Infrastructure Does Not Support Enterprise-Grade Voice
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Phone Pricing Becoming Attractive For General Applications About 10 WiFi Phones on market in 2004 Dual mode (WiFi and Cellular in the market in 2H, 2004) Overall solution pricing and choices becoming very attractive
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Key Requirements For Enterprise–Grade Voice over WLAN Security Easy Deployment & Management Transparent Mobility High Density QoS Recently Addressed Focus of Today’s Discussion With Standard WiFi Clients Widely Getting Addressed in Industry Enables Voice over WLAN Higher ROI WLANs
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Requirement: Support for High Density Even in Wireless “Hub” Total Bandwidth at Peak (Mbps) Baseband + Protocol Overhead Contention Loss Contention Loss Today’s AP Performance Desired, Predictable Performance Active Users Per AP 2003 AP’s Desired And Available Now Number of Active Users Peak Aggregate Throughput in Single Cell Environment
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Unpredictable channel access, latency, jitter AP gets proportional share of channel as one of the clients No over-the-air QoS Predictable channel access, latency, jitter AP gets the right amount of channel access (50%) MS I D 5.56 AP Channel Access with Meru AP for QoS Time (Sec) Over-the-air QoS Over-the Air QoS Technology Near-Deterministic Channel Access Time (Sec) Channel Access with Today’s AP AP
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Some Proprietary Solutions 2003 AP + Standard Client AP with Over-The-Air QoS Standard Client Requirement: Over-The-Air QoS High Voice Calls & With Landline Quality Dynamic mix of voice and data on same channels Typically on separate channels/network < 5 AP Wired QoS Over-the-air QoS AP Voice Quality MOS Score Higher than 4.0 Over-the-air QoS
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Requirement: Loss-less Handoff 50ms – 1 sec between handoff Disruptive for Voice WLAN’s Prior To 2003 New WLANs Virtual AP Architecture Less than 2ms for Voice BSSID = M 00:00 BSSID = XXBSSID = YY 01:00
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Summary: What to Look for In an Enterprise WLAN System To Support Voice 1. Over-the-Air QoS Handle Mix of Voice and Data Over Same Channels/Network High Number of Voice Calls Per AP Landline-quality (MOS Score of >4.0) 2. Support for High Density of Clients 3. Handoff Times of Less than 10ms Even with Security and across subnets 4. Should work with Standard WiFi Clients no proprietary technology on client/handset side
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Enterprise Voice over Wi-FI Improved Productivity, Lower Costs Voice, Video, and Data over same WiFi network - with Dynamic Over-the-Air QoS Seamless integration to existing data network and voice devices
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA VoWLAN handsets used for internal staff communications –Improved service –Lower costs vs. cellular or paging system Plan to replace in-room phones with VoWLAN PDAs used for staff applications & soft-phone IP-Centrex Service Hotel VoWLAN Deployment Meru Controller Data Center WAN Virtual AP WiFi Phones PDAs Floor 2 Floor 3 Floor 4 Floor 5 Floor 6 Floor 7 Managed IP Centrex Service Hosted IP PBX
October 4-7, 2004 Los Angeles, CA Thank You! Kamal Anand Vice President Marketing Meru Networks