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WWAN Case Studies & Press

 Enterprise Hub School Expands Wireless Network to Get More Students Online
 Laser-based Networking Keeps Students Online

Enterprise Hub School Expands Wireless Network to Get More Students Online
Extensive wireless LAN solution provides The Forest School an easy way to add teachers and students to the network.

The Forest School, based in Wokingham, Berkshire, provides an educational base for 1200 boys, aged 12-18 and has over 100 members of staff, teaching in a range of subjects. The Forest School has been a Business and Enterprise College (BEC) since 2003 and in 2006 was awarded the accolade of being an Enterprise Hub School for Berkshire. With this status in the Reading Borough, The Forest School wanted to provide a more consistent wireless service to its users.

Challenge
Individual teaching departments wanted to add more laptops onto the network, which would mean a higher density of users logging on. The existing wireless network had grown organically over the years but was unmanaged and struggled with the amount of traffic. A new solution that was centrally managed and scalable was imperative, as it had been decided that the whole site would not be covered with the first implementation.

The Forest School approached AIT Partnership Group to provide the expertise required to specify and install the solution. After the initial meeting, AIT’s wireless consultant Simon Round proposed implementing a fully managed Trapeze wireless solution in the main school block, the library and two other teaching departments. Due to the size and cost of the project, the Network Manager was required to look into solutions from other companies, with the final decision to be made not only on the solution presented, but also the price and proposing company’s capabilities.

Solution
AIT delivered the solution using their own in house team who oversaw all aspects of the project from site surveys through to designing the school’s guest network welcome page.

The first stage of the project involved implementing a Trapeze MX-200 Mobility Controller, and a number of ’Mobility Points’ into the main school block and three external antennas onto the English terrapin and Home Economics block. This provided better wireless roaming for the users and immediately. With the MX-200 implemented, The Forest School now have the capability to expand the network simply by adding Mobility Points into the areas they want to have covered.

Looking for Wireless for your School or University? Contact us on 08450 177 017.

Laser-based Networking Keeps Students Online
High-speed FSO wireless links enable full-time Internet access.

London South Bank University is a dynamic, inner-city university with a diverse multi-cultural population of some 17,000 students and around 1700 staff. The university has been providing high quality education in London for over 100 years and their students and staff come from a variety of communities and countries, making a truly multi-cultural environment.

Providing Internet access is an important part of South Bank University’s service to its students, in particular to the students resident in halls on the campus. Three of the University’s halls of residence were connected to the main campus via radio based wi-fi connections. However this solution did not deliver high-enough bandwidth, often failing to deliver any more than 3Mbps of throughput for each link. This level of bandwidth was grossly inadequate and would often cause problems for students using the Internet connection, and in-turn causing a major headache for South Bank University’s IT team.

South Bank University was faced with the task of finding a reliable, cost effective solution that would deliver high bandwidth connectivity, and that could be quickly implemented.

Various forms of building-to-building connectivity were considered. It was proposed that the preferred long term solution would have been to install a fibre connection. However initial cost and time constraints were seen as being prohibitive to installing a fibre solution at that time.

Instead South Bank University turned to AIT Partnership to provide a high bandwidth Free Space Optic (FSO) wireless solution.

After visiting the site and conducting a site survey WAN Partnership proposed the installation of five wireless laser links to meet the varying distance requirements between sites. FSO solutions were chosen to deliver 100Mbps of data throughput.

To date AIT Partnership has installed five FSO point-to-point laser links at South Bank University, and this number is set to grow. The university’s students now enjoy a much more reliable, high-bandwidth connection to the Internet at their halls of residence.

View an enlarged diagram of the South Bank University 'Wireless Network Configuration'.
 

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