[October 18, 2011]

University of Tennessee at Knoxville Facilitates Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Explosion with Migration to Campus-wide 802.11n Wireless Network Based on Aruba's MOVE Architecture

Aruba Networks (News - Alert), Inc. (NASDAQ:ARUN) today announced that the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UT Knoxville) is nearing completion of a campus-wide 802.11n wireless network upgrade with solutions based on the Aruba Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture. The university, which upgraded a multi-vendor wireless network to an all-Aruba wireless network in 2007, estimates that its more than 26,000 students and 5,000 faculty and staff frequently have more than 10,000 mobile devices simultaneously connected to the network. Prior to the 802.11n upgrade, this would have created unacceptable levels of contention for finite network resources, and impacted application performance.

UT Knoxville was an early adopter of wireless technology, beginning in 2007 with a campus-wide Wi-Fi deployment, which covered all areas except residence halls. Having deployed the Ethernet "port-per-pillow" Internet access design that was the standard for most university residence halls at the time, the university first deployed wireless in residence halls, at the insistence of the residents themselves. The 802.11 b/g solutions deployed then are now in the process of being upgraded to 802.11n. Multimedia application use has skyrocketed, driven by students using Skype (News - Alert), Netflix and Apple Facetime on their mobile devices. This is leading to an ever-growing need for mobile bandwidth, one that only an 802.11n network can address.

"The number of wireless-capable devices that are showing up on campus is absolutely mind-blowing. It's more than two per person," said Philippe Hanset, network architect at UT Knoxville. "This increases the need for IPv6 support, which Aruba offers. Smartphones, even when they are in someone's pocket, will still request an IP address and join any network they can. That tends to exhaust our IP address pools, because even if not registered, they take an IP address just to start the conversation. Sometimes we see more than 50 devices on one access point."

The university has deployed approximately 1,900 Aruba802.11n access points across campus, and is upgrading another 650 to 802.11n. Hanset plans to increase the number in residence halls to help manage the onslaught of smartphones, tablets and associated application traffic on the network. The university has also deployed seven Aruba mobility controllers, including five local controllers, a master controller and a master backup, with N+1 redundancy.

"Prior to 802.11n, when wireless was weaker, there was not too much of an incentive to hop on wireless and get rid of your wired connection," said Hanset. "Today we end up with not only the usual wireless devices, but even things like video surveillance cameras are on the wireless network when people could really use the wired network for it. The 802.11n is a much lower-cost, but high-performance, network."

UT Knoxville chose Aruba in 2007 over a variety of other vendors, including Meru, Cisco (News - Alert), Colubris (now HP) and Siemens. Hanset said that Virtual LAN pooling, enabled by the Aruba MOVE architecture, was very attractive, enabling mobility across campus by using a large Layer 2 domain. Hanset further noted that the diversity of the Aruba wireless portfolio drove cost reduction by enabling the university to choose exactly the right products and solutions for a given job. When deciding on a vendor for the 802.11n upgrade, Aruba was the first choice.

"UT Knoxville is leading the way in student, faculty and staff mobility by fully embracing 802.11n Wi-Fi as its primary access network, a change necessitated by the BYOD phenomenon," said Robert Fenstermacher, director of education product and solutions marketing for Aruba. "Phillipe's and his team's commitment to mobility is serving students, faculty and staff well by allowing them to use the device of their choice, with the applications of their choice, whenever and wherever they like."

About Aruba Networks, Inc.

Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise. The company's Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture unifies wired and wireless network infrastructures into one seamless access solution for corporate headquarters, mobile business professionals, remote workers and guests. This unified approach to access networks dramatically improves productivity and lowers capital and operational costs.

Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000® Index, Aruba is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions. To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook.

© 2011 Aruba Networks, Inc. Aruba Networks' trademarks include the design mark for AirWave, Aruba Networks^®, Aruba Wireless Networks^®, the registered Aruba the Mobile Edge (News - Alert) Company logo, the registered AirWave logo, Aruba Mobility Management System^®, Mobile Edge Architecture^®, People Move. Networks Must Follow^®, RFProtect^®, Green Island^®. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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