Walthamstow School for Girls
Situated in Walthamstow, North East London, Walthamstow School is a single sex girls school, currently educating in the region of 900 students. Occupying three main buildings of differing construction properties, the use of technology within the school, is integral to offering an immersive learning environment for the students.
The Problem
As with many educational establishments, the increasing demand of wireless client devices across the classrooms and office spaces, saw the existing wireless infrastructure reach its maximum capacity, which subsequently led to unusable network speeds.
The Solution
Following the 2016 BETT show, DigitalAir Wireless were contacted by WSFG to come up with a new design for their network, which would need to support Staff, Guest and Students for data, video and VOIP traf c. The school would also look to operate a BYOD policy, which would add to their capacity problems further.
To ascertain the requirements for the network and establish the appropriate solution, DigitalAir visited site to conduct a free RF survey of the school. This highlighted an importance for RF performance due to the nature of the sites construction, thick walls, ceilings etc. and con rmed the capacity expectations for the network, 30 client devices per classroom, outdoor coverage etc.
With this in mind, the design phase of our trusted 4 step plan found that an 802.11ac Wave 2 Ruckus Wireless network would be the most suitable solution for the school. With Ruckus’ patented BeamFlex technology and their affordable root into high capacity wave 2 MU-MIMO performance, the schools’ network would be future proofed for the increasing number of devices using the infrastructure, whilst reducing the overall number of APs required, when compared to the existing infrastructure by circa 40 APs.
Importantly, resource within IT departments is commonly overstretched, especially within education. As such it was an obvious choice for WSFG to remove the hassle of monitoring and maintaining their wireless network, by opting for a centrally managed, cloud- based solution hosted by DigitalAir Wireless, known as CloudCoded.
The Outcome
Within one week during the summer holidays, DigitalAir sent a team of 4 professional wireless engineers to decommission the schools existing network, install their brand-new access points in their optimum locations and commission the network to the cloud management platform, ensuring that this was working with the school’s existing 802.1x authentication process and Active Directory. Then to sign off the installation of the network, DigitalAir returned to site to conduct a nal con rmation survey, as part of their 4-step plan, to ensure that their 100% coverage guarantee had been met.
To ensure the smooth running of the network, DigitalAir will also be returning to site as part of their managed service offering, to conduct a free health check of the network, 1 year after its installation.