Mexican University Implements Aruba's Wireless LAN

Universidad del Valle de México, (UVM), a private university in Mexico, announced that it has implemented Aruba Networks’s wireless local area networks (LANs) across its 35 campuses throughout Mexico.

 

UVM says that currently it houses approximately 85,000 students and 7,000 faculty members. With 25 percent growth in student population in last three years, the university has plans of expansion to 40 campuses and anticipating that there will be over 100,000 students by 2010. In addition, there has been extensive use of digital library resources, on-line and collaborative learning, and team-building programs.

 

All the above factors have increased the demand for campus-wide wireless access to the Internet as well as university’s digital libraries. According to UVM, its legacy wireless network was difficult to manage, offered limited security, and could not handle growing traffic volume. After a review, the university selected Aruba and authorized partner IT21 S. A. de C. V. to provide new wireless network that would meet security, performance, and cost objectives.

 

Featuring a centralized architecture, Aruba’s adaptive wireless LAN facilitates in reducing maintenance, installation, and management costs. Its policy-based management offers a common user experience - at both local and remote locations. It also simplifies the expansion and updating of sites.  

 

Aruba’s adaptive wireless LAN features an integrated ICSA-certified stateful firewall that enforces policies for permanent and guest users alike. Its guest access control delivers high-level of security and can be easily managed by non-technical clerical staff as well, says Aruba.

 

UVM leverages Aruba's patent-pending Adaptive Radio Management (ARM (News - Alert)) software. According to Aruba, ARM software utilizes infrastructure-based controls that assist the behavior of Wi-Fi clients in such a way that would make the network operate in full potential. ARM software makes sure that data, voice, and video applications have sufficient network resources, including airtime, by controlling interaction between different Wi-Fi clients.

 

"We urgently needed a solution that would meet both the current and future needs of our large and growing student and faculty population, protect against unauthorized use, and reduce our maintenance, installation and management costs," said Eduardo Garcia, UVM's Academy CIO. "Aruba was selected because its integrated security, centralized management architecture, and quality of service met our service objectives. Equally important, the design minimized the staff required to manage, maintain, modify and upgrade the wireless infrastructure."