University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UT Knoxville) has selected the solutions based on the Aruba Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture and is nearing completion of a campus-wide 802.11n wireless network upgrade, Aruba has announced.
Beginning in 2007 with a campus-wide Wi-Fi deployment, which covered all areas except residence halls, UT Knoxville was an early adopter of wireless technology. The university first deployed wireless in residence halls, at the insistence of the residents themselves after having deployed the Ethernet "port-per-pillow" Internet access design that was the standard for most university residence halls at the time. The 802.11 b/g solutions deployed then are now in the process of being upgraded to 802.11n, the company stated in a press release.
“UT Knoxville is leading the way in student, faculty and staff mobility by fully embracing 802.11n Wi-Fi as its primary access network, a change necessitated by the BYOD phenomenon," said Robert Fenstermacher, director of education product and solutions marketing for Aruba Networks. "Phillipe's and his team's commitment to mobility is serving students, faculty and staff well by allowing them to use the device of their choice, with the applications of their choice, whenever and wherever they like”
Across campus, the university has deployed approximately 1,900 Aruba 802.11n access points and is upgrading another 650 to 802.11n. To help manage the onslaught of smartphones, tablets and associated application traffic on the network, Aruba plans to increase the number in residence halls. With N+1 redundancy, the university has also deployed seven Aruba mobility controllers, including five local controllers, a master controller and a master backup, the company has stated.
In October 2010, the company asserted that they have released the ArubaOS 6.0 and also design guidelines for high-density client environment deployments. The Ottawa Hospital, which deployed Aruba solutions, stated that they recently initiated a system-wide program to move to iPads in clinical use, which, with the existing use of Spectralink phones and other WiFi (News - Alert) enabled devices, makes theirs’ a very high-density wireless client environment. They have over a 1,200-bed, multi-campus healthcare system with approximately 1,200 physicians and 3,500 registered nurses.
Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by Rich Steeves