Wifi Revolution

The School District of Philadelphia will now be offering wireless Internet access at each school in the district. This marks one of the world’s largest installations of WLANs today. As announced today by Meru Networks (News - Alert) and Avaya, the district’s WLAN will grant access to secure converged voice, data and video services in approximately 268 schools for more than 10,000 teachers and 166,000 students.

 

“Charged with the fundamental mission of providing our students and teachers with  state-of-the-art computing capable of supporting high-bandwidth instructional applications, digital curriculum, electronic benchmark assessments and on-line remedial tools, the District is confident that Meru Networks has established a framework for wireless networking that will comfortably scale to satisfy our educational needs as demand grows,” said Philadelphia school district deputy CIO Bob Westall. “With the support of Avaya (News - Alert) and Meru, the entire school district now has an easy-to-manage, scalable wireless network that accommodates our high-density demands.”

 

Teachers can now wirelessly access online resources using wirelessly connected laptops, to support curriculum delivery and development. They can also support advanced educational applications for benchmark testing and data-driven decision-making.  This fourth generation technology will allow the district to “future-proof” the connectivity needs of faculty and students accessing converged video, voice and data applications at the same time. The entire network can be easily managed by the district’s network administrators.

 

The Meru Radio Switch, RS4000, is based on Meru’s air traffic Control Technology and is an ideal platform for high density environments requiring full Quality of Service (QoS), secure access to converged applications such as video streaming, toll-quality voice and data and multiple channel spans for high capacity. Using Meru’s patent-pending wideband omni-directional antenna technology, RS4000 is able to securely serve 802.11a/b/g channel bands and increase the total WLAN capacity by up to 400 percent in any given area.

 

Meru Networks’ wireless technology was initially chosen to provide the wireless infrastructure for the “School of the Future” project, a 2005 initiative led by Microsoft (News - Alert) and the School District of Philadelphia. Using technology to transform education, the School of the Future has become a global educational showcase for schools worldwide to better prepare students for college and joining today’s modern mobile workforce.  Meru’s WLAN delivers a high capacity network for pervasive access to multimedia learning applications, online curriculum and instructional content. 

 

 

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