Specialized Wireless Management Solutions for Educational Institutions

FREE ONLINE PANEL DISCUSSIONS - Listen Today!

K-12 Education Panel - (Recorded March 21, 2007)

Representatives from Fairfax County (VA) Public Schools, Tatum (TX) ISD and Adams County (CO) share their Wi-Fi experiences and take questions from the audience.

The IT staff in a school district typically works in the NOC in district headquarters, miles from some of the school buildings. At a college or university, the typical IT organization has to support a large campus with a small staff. AirWave's remote monitoring and configuration capabilities allow problems to be diagnosed and addressed quickly -- without having to dispatch a technician to the school site or building.

Schools and universities have long used traditional WiFi access points inside buildings, but are also beginning to use mesh and point-to-point wireless products to provide coverage to portable classrooms, athletic facilties, construction sites, and even outdoor areas. AirWave supports multiple wireless architectures (including both autonomous and 'thin' APs, mesh, and even WiMax) to allow you to control your entire network from a single console.

With constrained capital budgets, schools often need their investment in wireless infrastructure to last 4-5 years or more... which may be longer than the hardware vendor even supports the product. AirWave provides robust support for both state-of-the-art current generation products, as well as legacy support dating back to the earliest days of Wi-Fi.

Schools and universities commonly deploy their wireless networks in phases, with majot installations done during the summer or during school vacations. The installers need to move fast, before the students and teachers return. AirWave makes it easy to automatically configure each AP and controller as they are connected, eliminating time-consuming and error-prone manual processes.

As wireless networks reach every classroom, library, and residence hall, large school districts and universities may have thousands (or even tens of thousands) of wireless APs and devices. AirWave's scalable architecture ensures that even the largest wireless networks can still be managed from a single console.

With AirWave, the district support staff can instantly summon up maps of every school building, locating every user and assessing real-time RF conditions -- enabling problems to be diagnosed and resolved efficiently.

Students and teachers very often bring their own wireless access points and connect them to the school's network -- impacting the performance of the authorized wireless network and potentially opening a security breach. Yet, few schools can afford expensive IDS systems with hardware sensors. AirWave's RAPIDS module makes it easy to detect rogues anywhere on the network, without proprietary sensors.

Especially in the university environment, the first-level Support Desk is often staffed by undergrads or graduate students rather than experienced IT professionals. The intuitive AirWave interface is simple and easy to use -- and has appropriate administrative access controls to ensure that these student workers do not have access to inappropriate information or the ability to change network policies.