The school currently hands out laptops to most staff and is introducing laptops for pupils to use. The number of pupils using laptops will increase over the next few years so the school needed a scalable system. The wireless network will also be centrally managed, which it is hoped will reduce burden on the IT staff.
Helenswood Girls’ School is a girls’ comprehensive for 11-18 year-olds in Hastings, East Sussex, with approximately 1,200 pupils and 100 members of staff.
The project began almost two years ago, when the school decided that it needed wireless connectivity throughout the two sites. Reseller Net-Ctrl was employed to find a suitable service. Proposals from Aruba and BlueSocket were rejected because of cost, and so the school continued to use consumer wireless routers.
In April 2008, however, Net-Ctrl partnered with Ruckus Wireless and began offering the company’s ZoneFlex WLAN service that uses Ruckus’ patented Smart Wi-Fi technology. After a two week trial the school purchased 24 Ruckus ZoneFlex 802.11g access points (APs), two 802.11n APs to provide a wireless backhaul and the Ruckus ZoneDirector 50 management console. Each AP is capable of supporting 32 users.
“The Ruckus solution was not only the best on price, it was also a reliable and robust system. The network was installed over the summer and since the start of term, it’s been working with no problems – staff and pupils can easily connect and carry out their tasks on their laptops without the worries of losing connectivity, wherever they are within the school,” said a senior technician at Helenswood.
Mark Power, wireless security specialist at Net-Ctrl, said: “Partnering with Ruckus has enabled us to bring the benefits of wireless to more public sector organisations like Helenswood. Helenswood was not only able to complete the project on budget and on time, but the solution has also been really easy to set up and manage. The Ruckus APs automatically mesh with each other, and the management console is so simple to use that the IT staff at the school can get on with other tasks, confident that the Wi-Fi network is running problem-free.”
According to the company, Smart Wi-Fi combines technical advances in RF signal routing and adaptive antenna arrays with centralised WLAN management. It is said that this provides better coverage and a more reliable Wi-Fi signals that can automatically adapt to environmental changes.
