Students and staff at Dublin City University are to be among the first users in the world of the next generation of Wi-Fi technologies – namely WiNG 5 WLAN – from Motorola.
Some 11,000 students and staff across an 85-acre campus will begin using the enhanced broadband technology.
Dublin City University was looking to upgrade its existing wireless network to manage the growing student population at the university and to extend wireless capabilities to the libraries and canteens. The aim was to avoid congestion in the popular working areas.
In addition, the university wanted a wireless solution that could support its education roaming network facility (EDU-ROAM). The system allows staff, students and researchers from partnering institutions to obtain internet connectivity across campus and while visiting other institutions by simply opening their laptop.
The university plans to upgrade to Motorola´s next-generation architecture WiNG 5 WLAN upon release in a few months.
“The reliability and robustness of our solutions equate to considerable time savings and efficiencies for IT personnel. We look forward to continue working with the university as it expands,” said Marco Landi, vice-president Channel Business, Motorola Solutions, EMEA.
The new WiNG 5 WLAN will provide staff and students with an enhanced application performance experience and greater bandwidth. It manages capacity and resilience of 802.11n networks through intelligent traffic forwarding to avoid bottlenecks.
In addition, the university is implementing 165 of Motorola’s AP 650 multi-purpose access points, which optimise network availability, provide constant wireless security, and enable IT administrators to remotely troubleshoot network performance issues from any location.
Motorola’s RFS 7000 RF switches deliver carrier-grade wireless voice and data for between 8,000-96,000 users.
Motorola partner Dimension Network Systems is providing the university with configuration and integration services, and will also deliver system training to IT personnel.
The network will go live in February
“We’re excited to be giving our staff and students enhanced network capabilities so they have quick and easy access to applications and network resources, and the ability to connect to the network from a greater number of locations within the campus,” said James Healy, networks manager, Dublin City University.
“The capacity balancing functionality of the Motorola WiNG 5 WLAN solution was a big pull for us and gives our IT department more agility and peace of mind. We also liked the fact that our network will not experience downtime as the legacy access points can be controlled by the Motorola RFS 7000 RF, which saves staff and students from getting caught up in any potential disruption.”