Improved Mobility and Accessibility Make Voice over Wireless LANs a Smart Decision

It hasn’t taken long for the juggernaut of IP telephony to expand its footprint into almost every network and device type imaginable. IP telephony has proven it can deliver the communications solutions customers require with superior levels of availability. Since wireless access to the LAN is also proliferating across the enterprise and is now able to meet Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for business-quality voice, it’s only natural that these two technologies come together to improve worker productivity and reduce communications cost.

A successful voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) deployment is predicated on having a superior IP telephony system coupled with a superior WLAN solution. And that’s what ShoreTel® and Meru® Networks provide. ShoreTel is a leading provider of Pure IP Unified Communications solutions, delivering unmatched reliability, scalability and manageability, plus a user interface that sets the standard for ease of use. Meru Networks provides industry leading WLAN solutions, with scalability, ease of deployment and investment protection. For the endpoints, customers can use ShoreTel’s ShoreWare® SoftPhones on their PCs or VoWiFi handsets, such as the Hitachi® Wireless IP-5000 SIP phone.

Benefits of Voice over Wi-Fi
VoWLAN adds complete mobility and accessibility of employees to the list of unified communications benefits. And in branch facilities, voice and data over Wi-Fi opens up the possibility of eliminating wiring to each desk, which may produce additional savings. Additionally, the emerging high-speed IEEE 802.11n standard promises to give enterprises even more compelling reasons to adopt VoWiFi.

ShoreTel and Meru are combining ShoreTel’s Office Anywhere feature with the Meru Wireless LAN System. Users with a softphone or VoWiFi handset will be reachable by their desktop phone number anywhere they roam within their corporate facilities. Additionally, these same workers can use softphones or Hitachi VoWiFi handsets to direct dial anyone in the enterprise and access all of the features of the ShoreTel system. Workers would be able to reduce the number of devices they carry around, since a single network could handle both voice and data requirements. This enables businesses to enhance the productivity of their now, always available work force and also cut their cell phone bills, especially for employees who tend to rely on their cell phones even in the office.

“Combining IP telephony and wireless technology has moved well beyond the nice-to-have stage in customers’ minds,” says Chuck Neumann, senior product manager for ShoreTel. “Upgrading to VoWiFi to enhance mobile flexibility and reduce cellular costs is good business sense.”

Deploying a Meru WLAN system and the ShoreTel IP Telephony system brings a multitude of compelling benefits:

• A converged network that services data clients and voice and combined devices, while simultaneously providing the right quality and performance for each type of device.
• Superior voice quality for dedicated VoWiFi handsets and users communicating with the ShoreWare SoftPhone on their PCs.
• High density of up to three voice-enabled devices per wireless access point (AP).
• Industry’s highest data throughput for IEEE 802.11g clients in the presence of 802.11b clients, including dedicated telephones and PCs running ShoreWare SoftPhone. (When a network includes both 802.11b and 802.11g clients, many APs will slow down all communications to the lower 802.11b speed.)
• Voice quality that doesn’t degrade when users move around the enterprise, even across subnets.

Deep Experience
“Meru and ShoreTel are uniquely positioned to usher in this new era of VoWiFi connectivity,” says Kamal Anand, senior vice president of marketing and corporate strategy for Meru Networks. The two vendors have developed a set of technology requirements and best practices, conducted interoperability testing and certification, created complete installation guides, and provide ongoing support to one another. These cooperative efforts make for an easy installation process and have taken the guesswork out of deploying VoWiFi by confirming that the whole solution interoperates seamlessly.

“Strong interoperability testing and integration of the PBX/voice technology and the Wi-Fi network supporting voice provides strong assurance to enterprise customers that our solutions will work out of the box,” Anand says. “CIOs and IT managers are looking for the end-application to work seamlessly. Meru can provide this sort of application assurance out of the box with any of the certified endpoints.”

The ShoreTel ShoreGear® voice switches can be deployed together with the Meru WLAN System, which includes the range of WLAN Controllers and the AP200 or AP300 series of AccessPoints. The full-featured ShoreTel SoftPhone or basic SIP WLAN handsets may be used as part of the combined solution.

Meru Networks not only achieves unprecedented performance for wireless networking through assured application delivery, but also combines toll-quality telephony with robust data and video. This quality of service is due to Meru’s Air Traffic Control technology. Designed within prevalent 802.11 standards, Air Traffic Control addresses the critical elements for deploying enterprise-class WLANs that most networks lack. With Meru, high capacity data can coexist with toll-quality wireless IP telephony calls.

Get Ready for 802.11n
Expertise and experience with high-speed WLANs will be critical as customers begin kicking the tires on pre-standard broadband wireless gear. While a completed 802.11n standard is forecast for March 2009, vendors like Meru have built products that conform to Draft 2.0. This next-generation WLAN offers 74 Mbps second throughput, with data rates as high as 248 Mbps and an indoor range of about 220 feet, which is about six times the performance of what customers now get out of 802.11g products.

“802.11n is a key inflection point in the adoption of wireless. Enterprises and companies have already started deploying it after the Wi-Fi Alliance announced certification of Draft 2.0-based products,” Anand explains. “The higher bandwidth enables enterprises to deploy all-wireless offices at much lower costs and with higher mobility and productivity. Voice mobility and voice over WiFi become critical to realize the benefits of the All Wireless Office.”

Clearly, IP telephony and wireless have blurred the lines between circuit- and packet-switched traffic and voice and data applications. The pioneering integration that ShoreTel and Meru would bring to bear means that the “wireline look-and-feel” can be readily extended to every corner of the enterprise. While broadband wireless will only enhance the multimedia experience, customers need not wait to derive full benefit with solutions from ShoreTel and Meru.