Wifi Revolution

Thousand Oaks, California-based Xirrus reportedly has announced the deployment of its WiFi (News - Alert) Arrays across The Catherine Cook School, located in Chicago.

 

The school has its their existing Access Point (News - Alert) infrastructure with Xirrus WiFi Arrays. According to the school, this has been done to achieve better network performance for a one-to-one computer initiative and real-time learning applications used by students and teachers.

 

“We have a one-to-one laptop program in place for our 4th-8th grade students, which requires reliable network access campus-wide to be successful,” said Bill Mierisch, director of technology at the school.

 

He said that in addition to this group of 125 students, the school also have two mobile laptop carts with 40 computers serving more than 200 younger students, 10 wireless desktop computers stationed in classrooms, and an assortment of more than 100 laptops, Blackberrys, iPhones, and Windows Mobile smartphones used by staff and parent volunteers.

 

Mierisch said that Xirrus was selected to fix the emerging problems of Cisco (News - Alert) wireless implementation, including maxed out controllers due to increasing enrolment, network cost over-runs, and arcane skill sets required to manage the network.

 

“One particular application that was vital to our classroom success was DyKnow, a classroom management and instructional software package operating over Port 80,” he said, adding that company needed a solution that was sustainable over the long term, and provided the ability to connect large masses of students in small spaces.

 

“Xirrus helped us expand our network capacity with both excellent products and great ideas,” Mierisch said. “With over 90 percent of our clients able to use the 5Ghz band, our capacity for connections increased exponentially with Xirrus’ multi-radio Arrays.”

 

The transition to the Xirrus WiFi Arrays provided the school with the necessary bandwidth for WiFi to be their primary network connection, according to Xirrus officials.

 

“The Catherine Cook School realized that traditional APs cannot handle the user capacity or bandwidth required to be the primary network connection,” said Eric Dean, regional manager at Xirrus.

 

Dean said that the school realized the need for a better medium and called Xirrus to see what could be done, adding that “Working together, we developed a plan and successfully implemented a WiFi system that will support their students and staff for years to come.”

 

In related news, Xirrus earlier this month announced the selection of its 802.11n WiFi Arrays as part of the County of San Bernardino, Disaster Response Mobile Connectivity Solution.

 

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