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Victor Central School District
Victor, NY. 4,500 students. Replaces Aruba with RUCKUS® W-Fi for 1:1 learning and secure onboarding
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If the mission of schools is to teach, learn, support, improve and help students achieve success, then providing a robust Wi-Fi network is a must. We live in a digital world where technology is advancing at a fast pace. The younger generation needs to be equipped and ready for the future. Every educational institution must be at the cutting edge of new development. Helping schools achieve a reliable and secure network is at the core of what Ruckus does.
Challenge
Victor Central School District (VCSD) is a suburban school district located approximately 12 miles outside of Rochester, New York. The district serves 4,500 students from pre-K through 12th grade and 600 of staff. VCSD had an aging network designed to support teacher laptops, rather than 1:1 mobile learning in the hands of students with the implementation of Chromebooks. Ultimately, it became too difficult for teachers to instruct without a highly available, reliable network to support screen learning time in the classrooms. This led to frustrated students and a challenge for the IT department to manage.
David Henderson, IT director at VCSD states, “Our current wireless network was seven years old and just couldn’t keep up with the explosion of devices hitting the network. Putting in a future-proof, wireless network was key. During a 40-minute class, we would have up to six Chromebooks dropping off the Wi-Fi all the time. It was a pain to deal with and even our teacher’s laptops would have a difficult time staying on the wireless.”
Requirements
- A unified, indoor and outdoor wireless LAN that could be easily and centrally managed
- Ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage and strong signal strength to deliver high data rates to thousands of concurrent clients
- Higher capacity client support per access point (AP)
- A network that could grow to support exploding demand from an increased number of students and devices
Solutions
- Deployed 400 RUCKUS 802.11ac Wave 2 R710 indoor APs and five T710 outdoor APs
- Installed the RUCKUS virtual SmartZone (vSZ) for redundancy to deliver the high availability needed for online learning
- Installed Cloudpath for security—allowing IT to keep track of who is using the network
Benefits
- Equipped VCSD students and staff with a reliable and secure infrastructure
- Increased the number of concurrent clients supported per AP while improving signal strength and wireless reliability
- Seamless coverage throughout the entire campus
- Future-proof network to grow as their district grows