Wireless Solutions

This School District is located in one of the largest geographic areas of any district in California, covering 650 square miles, serving 21,000 students in 28 campuses offering PreK 12, continuation high school, vocational high school, science-based high school, and adult education programs.

Challenge

This School District had a network consisting of HPE switching hardware and Cisco wireless access points.

They needed to add access points at sites where coverage was lacking, and also upgrade legacy access points to provide improved wireless network performance for upcoming district-wide testing.

Existing HPE 5400 switches were in place, but it was necessary to upgrade the modules to 10G in order to alleviate bandwidth restrictions.

Additionally there were several sites that required a fiber-backbone upgrade to bring the network up to current standards.

Solution

VectorUSA proposed Cisco 2802I wireless access points to upgrade the District’s Wi-Fi standard to 802.11ax, increasing device capacity and alleviating network stress during state testing.

Additionally, VectorUSA supplied 10G and PoE+ modules for existing Aruba 5400 switches to provide the bandwidth and power needed to support the wired and wireless networks.

The old fiber backbone was also removed and replaced with new 10G capable fiber to increase bandwidth.

Benefits

The School District now has Wave 2 AC capable wireless access points, providing more bandwidth, better connectivity and increased reliability for delivering a consistent state testing experience for the students.

Additionally, the modular upgrade for the 5400 Series switches enables similar hardware functionality to be deployed in all locations, adding to ease-of-use and ease-of-management.

The upgrade to 10G fiber improved overall network speed and data delivery - two benefits that are critical for a network designed to host so many wireless devices.