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Five Things You Need To Know About 802.11n
Joe Epstein, Senior Director of Technology at Meru Networks

http://esj.com/Articles/2010/01/19/Five-Things-80211.aspx?Page=3

Though read cautiously... while Joe is super smart and Meru has some convincing ideas, the kool-aid spilleth over a bit.

Regarding his point number 5, converting Wi-Fi from a hub-like network to a switch-like network via "virtual port" is a nice spin. It's not quite an accurate comparison, but an interesting thought no less. :)

Marcus Escribi?3:

Though read cautiously... while Joe is super smart and Meru has some convincing ideas, the kool-aid spilleth over a bit.

Regarding his point number 5, converting Wi-Fi from a hub-like network to a switch-like network via "virtual port" is a nice spin. It's not quite an accurate comparison, but an interesting thought no less. :)

I'm glad I'm not the only person to notice that.

"Some 802.11n network vendors allow the layering of channels in one area, allowing a peak throughput of over ten times in one square foot, exceeding a gigabit of aggregate throughput to split across the users -- more than enough for most networks in the foreseeable future."--is that a reference to Meru's channel stacking technology? Ten times what number?

I have to give it to Meru--these guys are smoooth!

I think he's referring to 10x the peak throughput number he mentioned earlier in his article (up to 200 Mbps). The phrase "more than 10" is probably referring to channel stacking with up to eleven 5 GHz radios using 40 MHz channels.

I believe most vendors claim a maximum of 11 non-overlapping 40 MHz channels in 5 GHz, though some say 9 and others (non-DFS compliant) have only 4.

It is somewhat true that Meru has a unique claim here because they can load up a small area with multiple APs on different channels and not have to worry so much about channel reuse patterns and how it will affect the rest of the ESS's channel use. But to warrant this type of layering, you've gotta be talking about very high user densities as well as high deployment costs.

Yes, agreed... very smooth.