ANSecurity has published details of a successful project spanning across schools in the Bishop Konstant Catholic Academy Trust using Ruckus Wireless technology to dramatically improve connectivity to meet growing BYOD usage.
As Chris Slater, IT Manager at St. Wilfrid’s Catholic High School in Featherstone, the largest site within the Trust explains, “The wireless system we had in place was expected to last for at least five years. However, with the increase in ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) from students and staff there was an instant demand for a wireless network that could manage and facilitate more devices without slowing the system down and unfortunately our network just couldn’t cope with the demand.” Slater highlighted issues such as a full classroom of student laptops that could take up to 40 minutes to log into the overloaded network as well as complaints from users that they couldn’t connect to the internet.
With the growing BYOD trend, the IT team turned to ANSecurity for help to implement a Ruckus Wireless solution that could quickly resolve the pressing issues the school was facing. The project initially focused on the 1,800 pupils and staff at St. Wilfrid’s, running a trial project to test, and become familiar with the Ruckus products before investing in the upgrade.
“Since the installation of the Ruckus network there have been absolutely no network issues at all, which is great as there are nine other smaller primary schools whose IT systems we manage, so it helps reduce the support workload. We’re now looking towards using Ruckus Unleashed which is a cost effective way of deploying Ruckus to smaller sites. This product is exciting because not only is it great but it will save schools a considerable amount of money as it doesn’t require a controller.”
Ruckus Unleashed allows small and medium organisations to deploy and configure Wi-Fi in minutes. Ruckus Unleashed Access Points are easy to deploy with no controller, as a nominated AP will act as the controller which reduces cost of ownership and is compatible with all future Ruckus architectures. To improve coverage, the Access Point uses Ruckus’ BeamFlex+ technology and includes a range of guest access services such as, Captive portal, Email/SMS Guest Pass, Custom Logo, and Hotspot.
“Ruckus Wireless has not only made the network easier to manage overall but processes that were once very time-consuming and troublesome are extremely straightforward and simple,” says Slater, “and most importantly, it means teachers no longer have to waste valuable lesson time waiting for students’ devices to access the network.” A highlight of this benefit is the classroom full of laptops that used to take up to 40 minutes to log into the wireless network now takes just 4 minutes.
With the last site upgraded in 2015, the IT department has dramatically reduced the level of user complaints and streamlined many of the time consuming administrative tasks associated with the Wi-Fi networks. “The ANSecurity team were a great help at a time when we needed honest, expert advice. We know they are always there should we have any questions,” Slater adds.
