Wifi Revolution

The University of Macau has deployed a campus-wide Aruba adaptive wireless LAN at its Taipa campus. Aruba said that the University wanted to replace its legacy Wi-Fi network comprised of autonomous access points with a centrally-managed wireless LAN with automatic load balancing, a role-based firewall for security, and fault-tolerant wireless controllers.

 

The University picked Aruba based on its management system, integrated firewall, Adaptive Radio Management (ARM (News - Alert)) technology, and N+1 controller redundancy. Jason Ho, the University's director of ICTO, explained that the university’s legacy Fat AP wireless network was difficult to manage, offered limited security, and had an inflexible VLAN arrangement. Their new Aruba network addressed all of these issues.

 

Ho pointed out that the new centralized architecture makes short work of managing, troubleshooting, and updating the entire network. Although network access had been a constant challenge, their new role-based firewall provides a simple, flexible means of addressing the needs of their employees, students, and guests. The new network offers very flexible network segmentation: VLAN pooling can automatically assign a VLAN to a WLAN client and the VLAN-related settings are based on the value returned by RADIUS server. Ho said that taken together these features address the shortcomings of their previous network and pave the way for a variety of future applications.

 

Aruba officials point out that the University of Macau depends on its wireless LAN as business-critical infrastructure, and the legacy network suffered from disruptive outages if a device failed. The new Aruba network boasts N+1 wireless controller redundancy that can automatically switch to a back-up controller in the event of a failure.

 

Denny Lo, Aruba's territory manager, indicated that universities include a diverse range of constituencies – faculty, staff, students, visitors – and Aruba's highly-flexible architecture is very well suited to addressing such a wide range of users.

 

Aruba’s solutions extend far beyond adaptive wireless LANs and integrate multi-vendor network management, intrusion detection and prevention, endpoint compliance, access control, fixed mobile convergence, and a host of other technologies into a unified mobility solution. Lo said that they leveraged this wide range of capabilities to address diverse needs of the University and look forward to providing similar solutions to other universities in the region.

 

According to Aruba, ARM technology offers several benefits such as simplifying network set-up, optimization of radio channels to overcome local sources of interference, and ensuring reliable performance in densely-packed lecture halls. All of these result in follow-me connectivity that ensures the reliable delivery of high-speed data, toll-quality voice, and streaming video applications. ARM supports Intel Centrino, Apple (News - Alert) Macintosh, and the broad array of wireless PC clients commonly used by students, faculty, and staff.

 

Founded in 1981, the University of Macau’s campus covers 572,000 square feet and supports more than 6,000 students and 800 faculty and staff.

 

Aruba securely delivers networks to users, wherever they work or roam. In August, Aruba 802.11n, an adaptive wireless LAN (Local Area Network) and secure mobility solution was selected by the University of Tennessee for its deployment at the University’s Knoxville campus' College of Business Administration.

 

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anuradha’s article, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Eve Sullivan

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