SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARUN) today announced that the College of the Holy Cross had replaced its Cisco 802.11 a/g wireless network with a new 802.11n wireless network based on the Aruba Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture. The college has also deployed Aruba’s S3500 Mobility Access Switches to enable unified policy enforcement across both wired and wireless networks. The Aruba network now covers the majority of the entire campus and was selected specifically for its ability to serve high-bandwidth applications like video in areas where students and faculty have as many as three mobile devices per person.
“When we looked at what the Aruba S3500 Mobility Access Switch and the Cisco 3560 switch could provide we found that the S3500 had more features built in with regards to network access control,” said Harold Knapp, network operations director for Holy Cross. “We see that in the future we will be able to leverage a single set of policies on the Aruba Controller across both the wireless and wired infrastructure. It gives us one point of administration of access control for all devices, providing responsible access to network assets.”
Knapp also noted that the Aruba S3500’s 1Gbps per port throughput would offer significant advantages to the college over the Cisco 3560’s Fast (10Mbps/100Mbps) Ethernet switches, given the increasing number of devices on the network and the increased need for bandwidth to support video.
Holy Cross is a highly selective, four-year college of approximately 2,800 students located in Worcester, Massachusetts. The 174-acre hillside campus is the oldest Catholic college in New England. As such, many of its buildings were constructed of stone and iron. This, combined with growing student and mobile device numbers, created a challenging environment for pervasive Wi-Fi.
“Recent studies show that our students have an average of 2.5 devices per person, and that a full 90 percent of the connections made to our network are wireless,” said Ellen Keohane, director of ITS for Holy Cross. “That surprised us. Even faculty, who have traditionally been more wired-network oriented, and who all have Ethernet ports at their desks, are calling ITS if there’s even a momentary blip in their Wi-Fi coverage. The Aruba network helps us ensure that all of our constituents’ needs are met, even with high-bandwidth applications like video, which is used extensively here for both education and recreation.”
The college originally planned to put 802.11n in the common areas only, but later decided to make the deployment pervasive. The deployment of Aruba S3500 Mobility Access Switches provides power to the APs via PoE. The college is also trialing the Aruba Amigopod solution for guest access, and plans to deploy it broadly in the near future.
“Holy Cross sees the benefits of a unified access architecture and is moving quickly in that direction, to the benefit of both their users and their ITS department,” said Robert Fenstermacher, director of educational product and solutions marketing for Aruba. “Their user base is extremely progressive in terms of mobile device adoption and video use, making the Aruba MOVE architecture a fantastic choice for their scalability and security-related needs.”
About Aruba Networks, Inc.
Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise. The company’s Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture unifies wired and wireless network infrastructures into one seamless access solution for corporate headquarters, mobile business professionals, remote workers and guests. This unified approach to access networks dramatically improves productivity and lowers capital and operational costs.
Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000® Index, Aruba is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions. To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook.
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