Novato Unified School District

Reopening Novato Schools with RUCKUS® Wi-Fi and cloud management opens more possibilities

Novato Unified School District had a network that had a habit of “hiccupping” every 15 minutes. The inexplicable glitch was merely annoying when teachers and students were working with Google Docs, but it was intolerably disruptive for Zoom conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the Wi-Fi management was so non-intuitive that the IT team had to keep the network relatively static, creating frustration for both IT staff and users.

CommScope’s RUCKUS Wi-Fi 6 access points (APs) was chosen for its performance, coverage, and, especially, its ability to handle high-density environments with ease. In addition, the district chose cloud-based management over on-premise controllers with RUCKUS Cloud for its intuitive software for simplifying multi-site management along with all the capabilities IT wanted to support user needs, including fast turn-up of guest networks.

Fast Facts

8,000 students
Elementary, K-8 Charter school, middle and high schools
Largest employer in City of Novato with 800 employees in the district

Challenges

How to support a hybrid model pedagogy
More devices and online tools creating network glitches
How to have a simplified managed network

Solutions

RUCKUS Wi-Fi 6 APs
RUCKUS Cloud

Benefits

Increased speeds for bandwidth-intensive online applications and redundancy across school system without any hiccups
Making hybrid learning about the students and not about the network
End-to-end visibility through a single management console
The district is now able to integrate operational and informational technology seamlessly and provide safety solutions like vaping detection