Canada School District Deploys Wireless Network from Meru

Alberta, Canada's Christ the Redeemer Catholic School Division (CRCS) reportedly will deploy a Meru IEEE (News - Alert) 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless LAN in 16 schools district-wide over the next two years.


The fast-growing school division expects the new high-performance wireless network will enable their students and teachers to use laptop computers as effective video learning tools. Meru will ensure that the users will not have to suffer from long connection times and dropped connections that have plagued them in the past.

The WLAN has already been installed in the three schools and Vincent Van Hyfte, assistant superintendent for administration and operations finds its performance to be "rock-solid stable." CRCS expects the wireless system to perform as well as wired workstations.

Before CRCS chose the Meru WLAN, they were relying on an older wireless network that did not meet their expectations. Hyfte explained that their division was growing very fast and realized that they were losing their computer labs to classroom use. They experienced a number of problems with their old system including very long connection times. The older wireless technology was just not able to keep up once they started getting 25 to 50 laptops in a small area.

One of their technology providers referred them to Meru and they decided to replace their old system with a new high-performance wireless network from Meru Networks (News - Alert). The company successfully addressed the speed and capacity needs of Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools.

“Once the Meru system was configured and set up, it was a classic case of 'no news is good news.' We just don't hear of any issues with the Meru WLAN. Teachers can take their own laptops anywhere in the schools and have wireless access,” said Hyfte. “Students can sign out school laptops and get access, even in the gym. Users had a lot of problems with the old wireless network, but now they don't even think about whether it will work – they can just focus on their assignments.”

The district is encouraged by Meru’s performance and intends to extend Meru WLAN to all 17 district buildings by late 2010.

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