Wifi Revolution

Liberty University has launched Campus-Wide Wireless IPTV (News - Alert) using 802.11n Wi-Fi from Aruba Networks and HaiVision’s Furnace video distribution system.

 

Aruba officials said that the objective of the program is to provide roaming students with universal access to multi-channel video.

 

“Colleges and universities are deploying very sophisticated wireless networks both to support electronic learning initiatives and to displace wired Ethernet ports for cost savings,” said Tim Zimmerman, principal research analyst at Gartner (News - Alert), in a statement. 

As the capabilities and capacity of wireless LANs have expanded, he added, applications that were once the exclusive province of wired networks are migrating to wireless.

 

The momentum of this migration is not expected to slow because students now expect anywhere anytime access to learning, entertainment, and social networking applications and programs, Zimmerman said.

 

Liberty University has 46,000 local and distance-learning students, and more than 2,600 full time employees.

 

University officials said that the school’s 802.11n network was designed anticipating the deployment of wireless IPTV, and today delivers 15 live TV channels over the wireless network.

 

The network includes more than 770 Aruba 802.11n access points; Aruba’s policy-enforcement firewall for identity-based security, quality of service control, and traffic management; and HaiVision’s Video Furnace (News - Alert) system and InStream client player for secure multicast video distribution and instant access to live channels, channels delivered from disk, and video on demand.

 

HaiVision (News - Alert) Network Video is a major player in encoding and IP video distribution solutions.

 

“During the proof-of-concept stage, approximately 300 802.11n access points in dormitories delivered video and high-speed data on a single SSID,” said Bruce Osborne, Liberty University’s Wireless Network Engineer.

 

Osborne said that the university used Aruba’s Adaptive Radio Management to steer only 802.11n 5GHz-capable clients to that SSID.

 

He said that university’s 5GHz Cisco (News - Alert) wireless phones also used the 802.11n network but they operated on a separate SSID. HaiVision’s Video Furnace system simultaneously streamed video over Wi-Fi and to set-top boxes over the LAN.

 

“Our trials ran successfully for several months prior to our decision to roll-out wireless IPTV to the entire campus,” he added.

 

Robert Fenstemacher, Aruba’s head of education marketing said that wireless delivery of IPTV on campus is the wave of the future because it yields dual benefits.

 

“It brings content to students wherever and whenever they need it, something not possible with wired infrastructure. And, through network rightsizing, it minimizes the cost of delivering that content,” said Fenstemacher.

 

He said that Liberty University has demonstrated that Aruba’s high-performance 802.11n solution and HaiVision’s Video Furnace IP video distribution system support demanding multi-channel wireless video applications. In so doing, they make IPTV over Wi-Fi a viable solution for universities worldwide, he added.

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