ACADEMIA

Xirrus announced that it has deployed 802.11n Wireless Arrays across the Raynes Park High School campus in London, United Kingdom. Raynes Park is a comprehensive Secondary School with 1,200 11-19 year-old students attending the facility. As a specialist technology college with a particular focus on science, math, & design technology, Raynes Park needed a reliable wireless network to serve as the backbone for these programs. Xirrus was able to provide a high-bandwidth wireless network for Raynes Park that can effortlessly support their laptop carts with fewer devices and cable pulls than any other wireless vendor.

"The demand for ICT rooms in our school is really high and we simply don't have any more space," said Gary Dockrell, IT Systems Manager/Governor at Raynes Park High School. "We knew we could solve the problem by implementing laptop carts, but we needed a reliable wireless network to support them. We visited a number of local schools to look at how they use wireless. Most of them have an access point in each classroom and we didn't want to go down that road. Our building is particularly old and has thick brick walls, and I was really concerned that we would have to put one or maybe two access points in each classroom. We wanted a solution that would allow us to provide wireless much more easily with a smaller number of devices, so we looked at a number of solutions offered by other vendors."

"We came across Xirrus at the BETT educational show," continued Gary. "They told us how we could very easily provide high bandwidth to a large number of clients using a small number of wireless Arrays. We had them out for a site survey and it was really excellent -- they fully lived up to their promises. At the end of the day we were presented with a heat map and given a coverage guarantee. On top of coverage, the Xirrus guarantee to us stated that if it doesn't work, Xirrus will come back and put it right at no extra cost, and that was important to us. Since our Xirrus deployment and the implementation of our mobile laptops, the teachers have all been saying that the wireless is working perfectly. In fact, all of the comments have been fantastic. We wanted a solution that just works in the classroom, and that's exactly what we got."