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WiFi: independent tests, case studies speak volumes [ITWeb](ITWeb Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) E-learning is growing in momentum in Africa, especially South Africa. Universities, colleges and schools, are realising that the inevitable onset of technology is arriving like a tide slowly rolling in, as evidenced by the many solutions locally represented at the EduWeek exhibition this month. Tablets and laptops are at the heart of whatever e-learning solution is considered, which means one thing – WiFi has become critical as the hub of e-learning. As such, institutions rolling out e-learning should be laying a solid foundation, realising the risks of not doing so could be as perilous as cutting corners on the foundation of a high rise building. In the same way "vanilla WiFi" just won't cut it as your WiFi solution on which you build your e-learning environment, irrespective of the types of tablets and laptops and no matter which e-learning providers are chosen. The fact remains: "Smart WiFi is the first critical step to e-learning!" But this begs the question: "Which WiFi?" As with anything, learning from others' mistakes is vital, not to mention learning from the success of others, too. The range of international independent surveys and test results speaks volumes. Many large universities, having to spend millions on WiFi to support thousands of users, have already taken the time to conduct these surveys – at great expense of time and money. So what can we learn from these? * Any e-learning solution (from a class of 20 students to a university of many thousands) is a high-density application and requires an enterprise-grade, proven solution; * Self interference from the solution is a crippling problem that only one solution has proven patents to mitigate against; * Maximising gain and signal strength is vital to ensuring the highest speed of WiFi, which only one solution has patents to provide; * Scalability, expandability, cost effectiveness, relative performance and many other benefits can be derived from the right solution. So what is the right solution? St. Vrain Valley School District One of the largest school districts in Colorado. * 26 000+ students and 4 000 staff * 10 000 networked devices and 3 500 laptops * 13 communities * 45 schools (elementary, middle and high schools) * One of the largest most advanced WiFi deployments in the USA * 411 square miles including 51 buildings (3.8 million square feet) * Needed strong/stable client connectivity * Support for wide range of MAC, PC, thin clients, iPads, iPhones etc. * High-capacity support for large numbers of concurrent clients * Uninterrupted roaming; seamless integration with existing back-end authentication servers * WiFi applications including Google apps, student information systems (Infinite Campus), learning management (Moodle), guest access, and in the future, IP video streaming and VOIP. * St Vrain tested all main-stream enterprise brands of WiFi. Entry level brands could not even be considered. Testing on a single AP was done first. * "Our biggest concern was the connection to the client," said Eric Merrill, network technician at St. Vrain. "New smart handheld devices are not like laptops. These devices often have weak WiFi implementations. So when the orientation of the devices changes, the users experiences wild swings in performance. We wanted WiFi technology that could adapt to such changes." * After an exhaustive evaluation, St. Vrain began testing the Ruckus ZoneFlex system. "Our main objective was to break the product and see where and when those breaks occurred," said McBreen. "But we had some problems." * After testing 30 laptops, each with 1-2 Mbps video, they were unable to bring the dual-band AP down, St. Vrain network technicians turned 30 more Dell laptops on and began pulling video streams. "We had 60 concurrent devices streaming video from two classrooms and couldn't break this thing so we began pulling out iPhones, iPads ... anything we could get a hold of to make it fail," said McBreen. "Ultimately we had 78 devices pulling traffic off a single AP, and it wouldn't fail. That's when we knew we'd made the right decision." Drew University A Liberal Arts College Established in 1867. A private University in Madison New Jersey, 30 miles west of Manhattan was running 90 Cisco 1200 series APs. They found migrating to Ruckus was cheaper and easier! * 2 500+ students and 200 staff; * 187 acres and 35+ buildings; * Needed expanded indoor and outdoor coverage * Wanted higher speed 802.1n WiFi * Lower total cost of ownership What they had to say after researching solutions from Colubris, Aruba, Cisco and Ruckus Wireless: "With Ruckus Wireless, we were able to deploy a very sophisticated, campus-wide 802.11n network that is much easier to deploy and manage, at 802.11g prices. No other vendor we found delivered such value." After installing the initial APs, Drew found that the Zone Flex system provided better coverage, more adaptive and automatic control over the RF domain. Baruch College A senior college of New York (CUNY) in Manhattan. A 17-story building in the centre of Manhattan, one of the densest urban environments with extraordinary interference from surrounding WiFi networks. * 17 000 students * 180 smart classrooms * Theatres, conference and event facilities * 1.5 million square feet spanning five city blocks Baruch saw an explosion of WiFi devices. Almost every student has a smart handheld device that they want to use. "Our students were becoming frustrated," said Arthur Downing, Chief Information Officer at Baruch College. "When we started to see up to 30 people, any AP with our previous system would literally die," said Martin Fries, manager of Network Services at Baruch. They began a rigorous eight-month evaluation process of all the leading wireless LAN systems – bringing in vendors including Cisco, Aruba, Xirrus, Meru, Motorola, Meraki, Trapeze, and others in for a two-week period to prove the technologies. After the exhaustive, on-campus testing, Baruch selected the Ruckus ZoneFlex system. "During our roll-out we experienced a 10x speed improvement," said Downing. Contact Michael or Quentin Mobile: Jhb office: CT office: +27 83 395 6080 +27 11 452 6633 +27 21 939 1542 E-mail: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) Web site: www.uc-wireless.com/education (http://www.uc-wireless.com/education) (c) 2014 ITWeb Limited. All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |