Flagship Campus of the Largest Higher Ed System
in the Country Deploys Aruba 802.11ac and ClearPass to Deliver
Secure Wi-Fi in Classrooms, Admin Buildings and Residence Halls
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today
announced that the University at Buffalo (UB), the flagship campus
of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, has replaced its
legacy wireless infrastructure with an Aruba gigabit wireless
network. Using a combination of Aruba 802.11ac Wave 1 and Wave 2
access points, Aruba AirWave for network management and Aruba
ClearPass for policy management and guest access, the University is
upgrading all three of its campus locations, totaling 150 buildings
and 10 million square feet to deliver ubiquitous, high-speed
wireless access to students, faculty and administrators.
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With its new Aruba network in place,
University at Buffalo enables secure Wi-Fi for students, faculty
and administrators throughout its campus. (Photo: Business
Wire)
Founded in 1846, UB has a diverse, international student body
comprised of 20,000 undergraduates and 10,000 graduate students. UB
has been in a rapid growth period, with new leadership that
recognized the need to make high-density, robust Wi-Fi a top
priority for its campuses. Driving that need was the expansion of
hybrid and online courses, students’ access to videos and recorded
lectures, in-classroom learning applications and of course,
students’ desire to bring a myriad of devices into the residence
halls.
“As a member of our faculty stated, ‘Wi-Fi is as important to a
university today as ink or chalk was 100 years ago’,” said Brice
Bible, Vice President and Chief Information Officer for the
University at Buffalo. “Ensuring reliable, high-speed Wi-Fi has
been a top priority for our IT team.”
As Wi-Fi connectivity became the item most complained about by
students, faculty and administrators, the University began
searching for a better solution. After a formal Proof of Concept
comparing Aruba’s solutions to competitors in three key areas –
wireless architecture, network management and policy management –
UB selected Aruba for its network overhaul.
According to Jerry Bucklaew, Network Architect with UB
Information Technology, “We chose the Aruba solutions because they
delivered greater price for performance value and the portfolio
included gigabit Wi-Fi access points specifically designed for
residence halls/hospitality applications. For policy management,
ClearPass was the most flexible in terms of deployment and
configuration.”
Once UB settled on Aruba, the institution embarked on a
three-year network upgrade that will be completed in the fall of
2017 and is being deployed in two parallel tracks. The first track,
for classroom and administration buildings, started with the
largest buildings that also have the highest concentration of
academic spaces on campus including libraries and large lecture
halls, and will finish with the smaller buildings. The second
track, for the residence halls, is being conducted in two parts,
with about half of the dorms completed in the summer of 2016, and
another half to be completed in the summer of 2017.
UB is installing approximately 6,000 access points, 3,500 of
which are already in place, consisting of both Wave 1 and Wave 2
802.11ac APs. In addition, UB is using Aruba’s 7000 Series Mobility
Controllers, AirWave Network Management with the Clarity module,
and ClearPass for device profiling, differentiated customer access
and an efficient way to connect visitors on the guest Wi-Fi
network.
ClearPass was a key factor in UB’s decision to choose Aruba.
Bible noted that UB is using ClearPass Guest for two purposes that
are unique to the University.
“We’re using ClearPass Guest to create a guest’s active account,
but more importantly, we’re using it as a way to automatically
drive customers to register all of their personal devices. These
devices then reside on the Guest side of the house. The ClearPass
Policy Manager also delivers insights and profiling capabilities
used for visibility, planning and troubleshooting,” he said.
According to Bucklaew, ClearPass has been beneficial in reducing
complexity for the University, condensing their SSIDs from five or
six down to three, with their ultimate goal to have one for 802.1X
and one for everything else. In addition, UB is enthusiastic about
the profiling capabilities that ClearPass provides, which have
helped them enhance and streamline the device registration and
authentication process.
Bucklaew added, “Our two biggest types of devices are APs and IP
phones on our wired network, but with 6,000 of the former and
10,000 of the latter, we didn’t want each one of them to be
specifically registered. Using profiling, we can determine if a
device is an AP or a phone, then apply the appropriate policies in
real-time, so we can avoid individually registering these 16,000
devices. We can then continue to require registration and
authentication of all other devices on wired and Wi-Fi which will
become even more useful as we see more IoT devices on the
network.”
Looking ahead, Bible expects that the Aruba wireless
infrastructure will allow the University to explore new areas like
Mobile Engagement for location-based services. He also foresees UB
expanding coverage to outdoor portions of the campus, fine-tuning
their use of ClearPass on the wired network to bring it in line
with the wireless side, and enabling more scanning and profiling of
devices in preparation for IoT.
Bible says the University is already seeing significant results
from the new network allowing him to better meet the mobility
expectations of its students, faculty and administrators, while
preparing the University for the future. For example, based on
student surveys, residence halls equipped with the new Wi-Fi
infrastructure have seen a 21% increase in satisfaction as compared
to those still utilizing the legacy network.
“When UB first deployed wireless in 2000, it was one of those
nice-to-have things,” said Bible. “Wi-Fi was cool, but if it didn’t
work, it wasn’t a big deal. Now customer expectations have shifted
and regardless of the location, application or type of customer,
everyone considers wireless critical. It has to work 100 percent of
the time, no exceptions. With our new network, we’re seeing
utilization through the roof and the complaints we used to see
coming in from the website, social media postings and calls into
support have declined rapidly.”
About Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is a leading
provider of next-generation networking solutions for enterprises of
all sizes worldwide. The company delivers IT solutions that empower
organizations to serve the latest generation of mobile-savvy users
who rely on cloud-based business apps for every aspect of their
work and personal lives.
To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com.
For real-time news updates follow Aruba
on Twitter and Facebook, and for the latest
technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products visit Airheads
Social at http://community.arubanetworks.com.
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170314005208/en/
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise companyPavel Radda,
+1-408-419-0294pavel.radda@hpe.comorAruba, a Hewlett Packard
Enterprise companyLori Hultin,
+1-818-879-4651lori.hultin@hpe.com
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