Students at New York's Farmingdale State College now have access to high-speed wireless Internet in their library, classrooms and dormitories, thanks to a campus-wide IEEE ( News - Alert) 802.11n draft 2.0 wireless LAN from Meru Networks.
Farmingdale State College upgraded its existing Meru WLAN during 2008, from the 802.11a/b/g standards to 802.11n, letting its users have access to the Internet and share files at speeds that were five times faster than those supported by the previous standards. The WLAN's 200 access points have been installed in approximately 20 buildings on the 380-acre Long Island campus.
Jeff Borah, Farmingdale State College's assistant systems manager, said: “We’re the largest college of technology in the SUNY system, and we wanted to give our students the latest technology. We first installed a Meru 802.11a/b/g WLAN several years ago, and Meru's single-channel virtual-cell technology allowed students to move around campus as if they were on one big access point, without suffering disconnections.”
Farmingdale State College's 802.11n WLAN uses Meru's AP320 dual-radio 802.11a/b/g/n access points, that support creation of two full layers of wireless coverage network-wide; and MC3000 series controllers, which are used to provide the centralized intelligence to easily deploy and manage large-scale wireless WLANs. The college plans in the future to extend the Meru 802.11n WLAN to outdoor campus spaces, enabling its students to maintain their high-speed wireless connections while they walk between buildings, in plazas where they congregate and at all sporting events.
With Meru's integration with Farmingdale State College's Bradford Networks ( News - Alert) Campus Manager network access control product provides the college the option of implementing identical security policies across its wired and wireless networks. This means if a student brings a laptop on campus, or a visitor uses a mobile device at a conference or athletic event, he or she can log in through the Bradford system and be connected immediately to the Meru WLAN. Calvin Azuri is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Calvin’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Patrick Barnard
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