Boy Scout National Office now a Wi-Fi Hot Spot; The Meraki advantage

Last week my tech support hit squad in Delbros activated eight of the nine Meraki wireless transmitters I bought online from the US which we recently installed at the BSP National Office in front of SM Manila. The ninth unit is already installed at the canteen in the third floor but it is waiting for BSP’s electrician to finish some additional wiring works.

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We are still waiting for the delivey of a Dual WAN Router to serve as the primary interface and gateway between the Meraki wireless transmitters. This router will give us a lot more administrative control over the wireless network. In the meantime, Ford (Ordonez) and Edmond (Deus) manually configured and interfaced transmitters.

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I really am happy to have discovered the Meraki wireless transmitters through a gadget magazine from the US that my boss, Ed Delgado, is subscribed to. Meraki transmitters employ a new innovation in wireless networks called the ìmesh.î Unlike locally available wi-fi transmitters that operate in isolation of each other, Meraki transmitters complement each other. In effect, the more Meraki transmitters deployed in a network, the better the signal and performance of each individual transmitter becomes.

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Meraki transmitters also come with an online management system that allows a Systems Administrator to configure, monitor, and manage the wireless network for optimum performance as well as to customize security settings to meet an organization’s specific security requirements.

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A big WOW! Feature we discovered about Meraki is its GPS mapping feature that works in conjunction with Google Maps and Google Earth. Once deployed, a network of Meraki devices is automatically mapped and overlaid on a satellite aerial photo (courtesy of Google Earth) based on the actual GPS coordinates of each Meraki transmitter. Isn’t that cool?

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The BSP National Office Wi-Fi Hot Spot is actually the fourth Meraki installation we set up since December . It is, however, so far the biggest with nine transmitters in a single network powering a wi-fi hot spot of approximately half a hectare. Our three other Meraki deployments involve just three units each. These are: (1) at the Delbros head office near the South Harbor; (2) the DCC-North chassis yard of Delwater (Delbros’s joint venture company) near the MICT offices in North Harbor; nd (3) in Avignon condominium in Makati, residence of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Delgado, owners and top honchos of Delbros.

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For more information or to order Meraki wireless transmitters, visit www.meraki.com.