Wifi Revolution

Wireless LANs from Meru Networks (News - Alert) have been picked to support The Allegany County Public Schools’ mobile applications and deliver wireless networking to the district's more than 10,000 students, faculty and staff.

 

Located in Western Maryland, the district chose Meru due to its single-channel virtual-cell architecture and superior management capability. The Meru WLAN was purchased through Fusion Network Systems, a Columbia, Maryland, network and infrastructure solutions provider.

 

Completed in February, the district-wide Meru wireless deployment was part of a 2-year project to upgrade the network infrastructure across all 22 schools, a total of 26 buildings, in Allegany County.

 

The wireless network will allow access to online learning tools such as Safari Montage, thousands of educational videos, and online administrative systems.

 

According to Jeffrey Blank, supervisor of networking for the district, their first priority was to build for full wireless coverage, but they also wanted a system robust enough to give them added capacity when they needed it without purchasing additional equipment.

Meru enabled the district to strategically install fixed access points and also mount radio switches on mobile laptop carts. Teachers and administrators can carry their laptops anywhere and get access, and at the same time they have extra localized capacity as needed in high-density classroom situations.

 

The district was impressed by Meru’s single-channel approach and the strength of its management system.

 

“The single-channel architecture meant there was minimal channel planning to worry about, which was particularly important to us. After all, how do you do channel planning when you have roaming access points? Furthermore, it was mandatory that WLAN management and control be centralized and unified. Only Meru was able to do that for us,” said Blank.

 

The district’s in-house inventory system has been tied into the Meru WLAN using a RADIUS server for device authorization. The officials explain that as soon as a new wireless device is bar-coded into the system, it is automatically authorized as a wireless network participant. A Meru bridging option also allows most user traffic, such as Web browsing, access to data and applications, and printer requests, to be handled locally and not pass through the controller. This conserves WAN bandwidth by reducing traffic between access points and controllers.

 

 

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