Poland University Gets Wi-Fi From Meru

Nicolaus Copernicus University, in Torun, Poland has reportedly deployed Meru’s Wireless LAN with a Virtual Cell Architecture to provide secure wireless Internet access without dropped connections for students and faculty.

 

The university's network has around 400 users a day and more than 2000 regular users a month.

 

The addition of new arrivals to the university placed heavy demands on the network for an uninterrupted Internet connection in open access areas such as libraries, halls and cafeterias.

 

Tomasz Wolniewicz, director of information and communications technology said, "We needed a network that would give access to that number of students without breaks in service."

 

He said that the old network was not able to cope. Users were noticing breaks in service of up to several seconds when they would roam the campus and their laptops switched between one access point and another.

 

With Meru's virtualized WLAN architecture, a single channel is selected for use by all access points enterprise-wide, and a dedicated "virtual port" is assigned to each client device to maximize performance, reliability, and enterprise control over wireless resources. Additional channels can be layered as more capacity is required.

 

The network uses 65 Meru AP200 access points supporting the IEEE (News - Alert) 802.11a/b/g standards and an MC3000 controller, which provides the centralized intelligence to easily deploy and manage large-scale WLANs.

 

The Meru network is being supplied by the Konsorcjum FEN in cooperation with its partner Poltel.

The new network system now coversvarious academic departments as well as the library and administration buildings in the University campus.

 

Meru network is also made available to visitors from other universities, as it connects to the international secure Eduroam system, which provides user authentication for wireless LANs in educational establishments across Europe.