Meraki Rated “Promising” in Leading Industry Analyst Firm’s MarketScope for Wireless LAN Intrusion Prevention (WIPS) Systems

Meraki, the leader in cloud networking, today announced that it has been rated “Promising” by Gartner Inc. in the 2011 MarketScope for Wireless LAN Intrusion Prevention Systems:

This MarketScope analyzes the performance of vendors that have focused on the WLAN IPS market from the second half of 2010 through the first half of 2011. Gartner’s evaluation is based on (in order of importance) continuing discussions with Gartner clients that are using and evaluating these products, survey responses from the vendors, and interviews with reference customers that were provided by the vendors. The ratings shown quantify Gartner’s opinions of each vendor’s performance in the market and should be used as just one input in your buying decisions.

Gartner “MarketScope for Wireless LAN Intrusion Prevention Systems,” John Girard, John Pescatore, and Tim Zimmerman, July 12, 2011.

Indeed, by integrating WIPS functionality seamlessly into its cloud controlled wireless LAN, Meraki provides a highly secure wireless environment out of the box. Built-in security features include:
Two-factor authentication
Third party security audits: penetration testing, PCI compliance, SAS-70 Type II datacenter audits
Rogue AP detection, classification, and alerts
Stateful policy firewall with LAN isolation and identity-based policies
Layer 7 application firewall to block unwanted apps

Design Within Reach, a leading furniture retailer, recently deployed Meraki’s Cloud Networking solution across its 50 retail stores, warehouses, and headquarters. The deployment succeeded in preparing the network for iPads and guest WiFi, while maintaining security standards necessary in a retail environment. “While DWR extends connectivity to our customers, we must maintain strict PCI compliance,” said Roger Mueller, Director of I.T. at Design Within Reach. “Meraki gives us powerful new tools to provide the security, capacity, and management that we need in a premium retail environment.”

Meraki’s cloud platform delivers features like two-factor authentication and daily third-party security audits that are not feasible in traditional architectures. Meraki’s out-of-band control plane provides the benefits of the cloud while maintaining PCI and HIPAA compliance. Meraki includes complete wireless security at no additional cost, with no extra hardware or software licenses to purchase. Meraki also integrates seamlessly with third-party WIDS/WIPS systems.

About Meraki
Meraki is the recognized leader in Cloud Networking. 100% cloud-based from day one, Meraki’s architecture delivers out-of-the-box security, scalability, and management to enterprise networks. Meraki has been deployed in over 18,000 customer networks worldwide, including Stanford University, British Telecom, Burger King, Starbucks, and M.I.T. Meraki is located in San Francisco, California, and is funded in part by Sequoia Capital and Google. For more information, visit http://meraki.com.

About the MarketScope
The MarketScope is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The MarketScope is an evaluation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the MarketScope, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest rating. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Renton School District Selects Meraki for Nation’s First Campus-Wide 3-stream 802.11n Network

Meraki, the Leader in Cloud Networking, today announced that Renton School District selected Meraki’s MR24 cloud controlled wireless access points to provide enterprise-class WiFi to Renton’s 16,000 students, faculty and staff. The Renton School District deployment covers 28 sites, including elementary, middle and high schools, the district office, facilities, and the football stadium. Renton is the first school district in the nation to adopt the latest generation of 802.11n WiFi, featuring 3-stream, 900 Mbps performance.

Meraki’s high performance MR24 access points are centrally managed by the award-winning Meraki Enterprise Cloud Controller. “Meraki allows me to manage the network across the entire district, and I’m a team of one,” said Todd Baker, Network Administrator for Renton School District. “The capabilities of Meraki’s Cloud Controller are incredible. There’s one dashboard for everything, from provisioning APs to troubleshooting client issues. The ease of use and powerful tools greatly reduce my site visits.”

The Meraki MR24, an ultra high-performing 3-stream 802.11n access point, is ideal for dense classroom environments and high-bandwidth applications. Renton is rolling out 352 MR24s in a deployment totalling more than 415 Meraki access points. The campus-wide coverage supports Renton’s Computer on Wheels (COW) program, which provides classrooms with “COW carts” to stream video, data and other media.

Renton leveraged Meraki’s contract with the Washington Learning Source (WLS), which facilitates deployments for Washinton state school districts. Prior to selecting Meraki, Baker carefully evaluated a number of networking vendors. In a performance test of 2 finalists, the Meraki MR24 outperformed in WiFi range. Moreover, the ease of use and reliability of Meraki’s cloud controller impressed Baker. “I’ve had a controller go bad on me in the past. With Meraki’s cloud controller, I’ll never have to deal with that again,” Baker said.

In selecting Meraki, Renton School District saved $1 million, enabling it to invest in new classroom learning technologies. “This project was funded by our community from the 2008 voter approved Technology Levy,” said Stosh Morency, Director of Information Management Services. “Working with Meraki allowed the district to add wireless building-wide in 28 facilities and still finish $1 million under budget. These savings will fund additional technology in our classrooms helping keep our students ahead of the curve.”

About Meraki
Meraki is the leader in Cloud Networking. 100% cloud-based from day one, Meraki’s architecture delivers out-of-the-box security, scalability, and management to enterprise networks. Meraki has been deployed in over 18,000 customer networks worldwide, including Stanford University, British Telecom, Burger King, Starbucks, and M.I.T. Meraki was named a visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Wireless LAN, and won Techworld’s Wireless and Mobility Product of the Year. Meraki is located in San Francisco, California, and is funded in part by Sequoia Capital and Google. For more information, visit www.meraki.com.

About Renton School District
Renton School District educates students enrolled in its 23 elementary, middle and high schools in and around the city of Renton in King County, Washington. The award winning school district is at the frontier of technology implementation in accordance with its technology plan to promote and facilitate learning with emerging networking technologies.

CRN News - Wireless market soars in Q1

The wireless LAN (WLAN) market enjoyed a bumper start to 2011, with both the B2B and retail segments posting annual sales growth of more than 20 per cent.

Research from IDC found that global wireless revenue in Q1 was up 20.7 per cent year on year to $1.35bn (£824m). Retail sales spiked 21 per cent to $751m, while the enterprise market grew 20.3 per cent.

Sales of 802.11n technology remain strong. Some 18 months after the n standard was ratified, the technology now accounts for more than three quarters of all B2B shipments.

On the vendor front, Cisco enjoyed enterprise WLAN sales growth marginally above market levels, but its consumer Linksys brand posted a muted 7.2 per cent growth rate. 

It was a similar story for HP, whose Q1 WLAN revenue grew at 14.4 per cent annually, more than six points behind the market rate. Aruba, on the other hand, enjoyed a stonking quarter, with sales – including OEM revenue – growing a massive 85.9 per cent year on year.

Rohit Mehra, director of enterprise communications infrastructure at IDC, said: "The continued strength in the WLAN market in the first quarter of 2011 was encouraging, with all regions and both the enterprise- and retail-class market segments making a contribution. The tremendous momentum behind smart mobile devices and their continued uptake in the enterprise for business applications are driving enterprises to move forward with upgrades, extensions and replacements of their wireless infrastructures."

Read more: http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2075684/wireless-market-soars-q1#ixzz1O8FFP4KK 

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What do spark plugs and WLAN solutions have in common?

It’s not the most daring and cutting-edge prediction to say 2011 will be Wi-Fi’s second coming. However, you might be caught off guard when I tell you to not worry about a vendor’s WLAN architecture.

Your business needs will flush out the right one. Despite the initial hype seven years ago that Wi-Fi was going to be the new edge, it’s been the second choice for most users to connect with at work — but that will change.

A tidal wave of wireless devices will be crashing through the enterprise front door very soon. Just look at the carriers scrambling to build out their infrastructure — there’s no shortage of stories about AT&T and their build-out of Wi-Fi in metropolitan areas.

And users have fused their work and personal phones and are looking to seek coverage from carrier data plans.

The time to start was yesterday, and you have a ton of work to do. Your edge will be servicing:

• Employees with corporate netbooks and their own smartphones and/or tablets who watch training videos on YouTube from companies like VMware.
• Devices like torque tools, temperature sensors in exothermic chambers, ambient light sensors, and a myriad other devices.
• Contractors with their own laptops, netbooks, tablets, and/or smartphones who need access to specific company applications.
• Guests like account executives entering customer information into their CRM programs.
• All the things being developed at venture capital backed incubators.

The industry is still evolving. We started with distributed architecture with uncoordinated and intelligent access points then moved to a centralised one with coordinated and thin access points (APs). The pendulum is starting to swing back to distributed and intelligent APs, except now they’re coordinated.

Management, data, and control planes have gotten more sophisticated to coordinate data, users, and management between each access point instead of having a controller figure it out.
Aerohive and Meraki Networks offer distributed solutions, and the other vendors have been mudslinging. At one time Proxim and Cisco’s Aironet marketing teams tore into Aruba’s and Symbol’s controller-based architecture. Have you seen a Proxim AP attached to a ceiling in a while?

These types of arguments remind me of the auto wars in the late ’70s and early ’80s. US auto manufacturers railed against front-wheel drive cars; most of them were foreign. Now, front-wheel drive architecture dominates auto sales, and US auto manufacturers produce more FWD than RWD. There’s a place for each type — as with wireless architectures.

For example, a cloud-based vendor, Meraki, offers a compelling value proposition. I’ve spent a lot of time with state, local, and education customers who have limited resources. A cloud-based solution from Meraki in which the users wouldn’t have to reconfigure their network for controller redundancy or set up a server for management would be ideal.

Most k-12 infrastructure and operational professionals wear networking, server, and help desk hats all at the same time. A solution with less moving parts with comparable features would be nirvana for them.

There are a lot of vendors and great solutions available for every type of company. Meraki and Aerohive might not be close in size to the market leaders today, but look what happened to the market leaders of yesterday. To woo you, larger and more established vendors with a zillion features have a tendency to direct you to the latest and coolest features like RF analysers.

In many instances, most of the “new” features are an insignificant piece of the overall solution. For example, I can choose to put iridium rather than copper spark plugs in my engine to increase performance, or I can take advantage of other mundane modifications: keeping tires at the right pressure, ensuring the air filter is clean, changing out the exhaust, or putting in a performance chip.

Any of those can create a magnitude of difference in horsepower and mileage compared with precious metal spark plugs — and even for a lot less money.

Are you using all the features you were sold? What are the top three features your organisation can’t live without? Any ones that didn’t work the way you expected?

Meraki Debuts Networking as a Service Pricing Program

Eliminating upfront hardware costs for the users, Meraki has announcedNetworking as a Service, a new pay-as-you-go pricing model for cloud-managed network infrastructure products.

Like the Amazon Web Services benefits the datacenter, orSalesforce.com (News - Alert) improves CRM, Networking as a Service brings the cost savings and flexibility of the cloud to enterprise networking. It has no upfront hardware costs and provides improved cash flow and allows the users to grow, shrink, or upgrade at any time.

Networking as a Service provides various advantages to the users when compared to the traditional capex models. Enhanced with the help of cloud computing, this is the ideal way to pay for IT expenses in the modern world.

"Meraki's Networking as a Service program provides a cost-effective and convenient way for organizations to obtain a Meraki system on a 'pay as you go' model," said Hans Robertson, VP of product management and co-founder at Meraki. "Networking as a Service eliminates upfront capital expense, gives you the option to upgrade your hardware for no cost at any time, and removes the financial risk of owning too much infrastructure."

The new solution allows the users to pay only for what they use, with no commitment. It also comes with maintenance, support, and upgrades included. With wireless LANs starting at $25 per access point per month and branch routers from $35 per router per month, Networking as a Service is available for all Meraki enterprise wired and wireless products. The subscription fee includes all hardware, software licenses, support, maintenance, and upgrades, the company has stated.

In December 2008, the company started shipping a solar-powered Wi-Fi mesh device that, according to the manufacturer, will make wireless networks energy- independent. Meraki's device is likely to become popular among networking gear vendors in emerging markets, like India and China, where power outages often shutdown wireless towers. In advanced countries like the U.S., the solar-powered device removes the need to hire an electrician to set up Wi-Fi on rooftops.

2 Wi-Fi vendors adding cloud-based networking

Two wireless LAN vendors are adding wired connectivity to their Wi-Fiofferings, to create managed, cloud-based networking services for a range of enterprise customers.

In effect, these new services from Meraki Networks and Aerohive Networks will let enterprises "rent" secure wired and wireless networking services, administered via an online management interface, without having to invest capital dollars in hardware and software.

COX ON WIRELESS: 'Stealing' Wi-Fi- isn't about Wi-Fi

The services from both vendors are designed to be simple to deploy, set up and use. For both companies, a prime target is the small and medium business market, and highly distributed companies with branch offices.

That's the same wireline market targeted by Cisco, with its highly successful Integrated Services Router (ISR) product family.

MERAKI'S MOVE

Meraki has unveiled a family of wireline network routers. Like Meraki's Wi-Fi access points, the routers will be managed and secured by a cloud-based set of services accessed via a Web interface. Enterprise customers will be able buy and adjust a network infrastructure on a pay-as-you-go basis for an annual fee.

The Meraki routers combine four distinct functions traditionally handled by separate appliances: routing, application firewall, site-to-site VPN, and network monitoring. In addition, customers that have been relying on leased lines or similar WAN arrangements will be able to substitute for redundant cable modem or DSL connections for still more operational savings, according to Meraki executives.

The Meraki MX50 is for small branch offices, retail stores, and the like; it's priced at $400 per year, including maintenance. The Meraki MX70 is aimed at medium to large branch deployments, priced at $800 per year. Each will have a choice of two software "editions": the complete package includes all the advanced security features, including a full firewall; a second edition, lacking these features, is intended for use behind an existing enterprise firewall, and will cost less.

Both will be available starting Feb. 13.

AEROHIVE'S ACQUISITION

Aerohive Networks is taking a different route -- by acquisition -- to a similar goal. The Wi-Fi vendor announced this week it has bought Pareto Networks, a privately held Sunnyvale, Calif., company. Pareto released in June 2010 a subscription networking service (based on several pending patents) aimed at mid-sized companies, and branch offices. The service included an on-site router, with optional 3G or 4G interfaces for wireless backup, VPN, SSL, a proxy infrastructure, and a Web-based management application. There were no capital costs, just the all-inclusive monthly fee.

In fall 2009, Aerohive released its own Web-based wireless LAN offering, HiveManager Online, a cloud-based version of the WLAN management application to manage Wi-Fi networks in branch offices and small to medium businesses. Aerohive's WLAN architecture eliminates separate controllers by in effect distributing control functions to the access points and the cloud-based management software.

Interested in Location Services? Join us Friday for a live demo.

Interested in Location Services? Join us Friday for a live demo.

Meraki » The Official Meraki Blog

Many of you have expressed interest in our new Location Services, which allow enterprise customers to determine the location of WiFi clients without additional hardware. We're therefore holding a quick, informal webinar on Friday, during which we'll talk a bit about how this feature works under the covers, do a live demo, and hold Q&A. The webinar runs just 15 minutes, so it's a great quick way to learn about this new feature. You can register (for free, of course) here.

We hope you will join us!

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Cloud Computing Used to Hack Wireless Passwords

PC World — German security researcher Thomas Roth has found an innovative use for cloud computing: cracking wireless networks that rely on pre-shared key passphrases, such as those found in homes and smaller businesses

Roth has created a program that runs on Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) system. It uses the massive computing power of EC2 to run through 400,000 possible passwords per second, a staggering amount, hitherto unheard of outside supercomputing circles--and very likely made possible because EC2 now allowsgraphics processing units (GPUs) to be used for computational tasks. Among other things, these are particularly suited to password cracking tasks.

In other words, this isn't a clever or elegant hack, and it doesn't rely on a flaw in wireless networking technology. Roth's software merely generates millions of passphrases, encrypts them, and sees if they allow access to the network.

However, employing the theoretically infinite resources of cloud computing to brute force a password is the clever part.

Purchasing the computers to run such a crack would cost tens of thousands of dollars, but Roth claims that a typical wireless password can be guessed by EC2 and his software in about six minutes. He proved this by hacking networks in the area where he lives. The type of EC2 computers used in the attack costs 28 cents per minute, so $1.68 is all it could take to lay open a wireless network.

Roth intends to make his software publicly available, and will soon present his research to the Black Hat conference in Washington, D.C.

Using EC2 for such ends would be against Amazon's terms of use, of course, butReuters quotes Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener as saying that if Roth's tool is used merely for testing purposes, everything's above board.

Roth's intention is to show that wireless computing that relies on the pre-shared key (WPA-PSK) system for protection is fundamentally insecure. The WPA-PSK system is typically used by home users and smaller businesses, which lack the resources to invest in the more secure but complicated 802.1X authentication server system.

WPA-PSK relies on administrators setting a passphrase of up to 63 characters (or 64 hexadecimal digits). Anybody with the passphrase can gain access to the network. The passphrase can include most ASCII characters, including spaces.

WPA-PSK is believed to be secure because the computing power needed to run through all the possibilities of passphrases is huge. Roth's conclusion is that cloud computing means that kind of computing power exists right now, at least for weak passwords, and is not even prohibitively inexpensive.

Meraki Adds Client Location Services to Cloud-Controlled ...

Meraki, the cloud-based networking company, today announced the addition of Client Location Services to its cloud-based wireless LAN solution.

Knowing the physical location of mobile assets saves valuable time and money in many environments. In healthcare organizations, costly medical equipment must be tracked down to serve patients and for maintenance. In retail environments, handheld scanners can easily be misplaced, and in offices and classrooms, laptops and iPhones go missing all too frequently. In addition, detailed knowledge of client location can be invaluable to helpdesk personnel for troubleshooting client issues.

Meraki’s Client Location Services allows administrators to locate wireless clients quickly and easily, using existing Meraki wireless LAN infrastructure. With Client Location Services, administrators can view the location of wireless clients on a custom floor plan or map. Additionally, Client Location Services includes Google Maps integration for tracking clients in campus or outdoor deployments – administrators can view clients on map, satellite, or hybrid views via a simple toggle. Locations are viewed via Meraki’s secure browser-based

Client Location Services integrates seamlessly with Meraki’s Client Fingerprinting technology, which dashboard, making Client Location Services ideal for distributed, multi-site, and remotely managed environments enables administrators to identify clients by device name, operating system, etc. An administrator can, for example, locate an individual client by searching for “John’s iPhone”, or search for “Windows 7″ to see the locations of all laptops running Microsoft Windows 7.

“Client Location Services is a powerful new addition to Meraki’s wireless LAN,” says Slade James, Network Services Supervisor at Coronado Unified School District in California. “The fact that we woke up one morning and found that our network was upgraded with this new capability really hammered home the magic of cloud-based networking. We continue to find new uses for this capability, like tracking down clients that do not meet our standards for acceptable use or system configuration.”

Key Client Location Services benefits:

•Uses existing wireless LAN infrastructure – no new hardware or software to purchase or deploy, and no per-device licensing

•Built-in Google Maps and custom floor plan support

•No configuration, setup, or training required

•Scales to tens of thousands of clients per network

Client Location Services operates by intelligently triangulating client location using the signal strength of multiple access points that “see” the client. Location can be determined with as few as three access points, making Client Location Services equally suited to small branches and large campuses. Advanced triangulation techniques, employ weighted averages and AP selection algorithms to ensure accuracy.

Client Location Services provides location tracking for WiFi clients using an existing Meraki wireless LAN, with no added cost and complexity. As a certified technology partner of Real Time Location Services (RTLS) solution providers, Meraki wireless LANs also integrate with third party RFID-based systems, enabling tracking of non-WiFi assets such as golf carts, hospital beds, and heavy machinery.

Client Location Services is available immediately to all Meraki Enterprise Cloud Controller customers.

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