The University of Rhode Island Gains Speed With Aruba 802.11n Wi-Fi

Legacy Fat AP Network Was Throttling IT Productivity and Network Performance
Aruba Networks, Inc. ~ September 15, 2009,
SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - 09/15/09) - Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARUN - News), a global leader in wireless LANs and secure mobility solutions, today announced that The University of Rhode Island (URI) is deploying an adaptive 802.11n Wi-Fi network throughout its 1,200 acre Kingston campus. Chartered in 1888 as the state's agricultural school, the university serves more than 14,500 undergraduate and 4,500 graduate students. The new high-speed network replaces an aging Cisco Fat AP deployment that required manual intervention by IT to resolve RF issues, was difficult to troubleshoot, and had limited intrusion detection and access control features. After evaluating single, multi-channel, and controller-less wireless LANs, Aruba was selected because its Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) technology delivered stellar RF performance, while its policy enforcement firewall and integrated wireless intrusion detection delivered highly granular control over access and security.
"Aruba was the only vendor to offer the triple-play we needed: adaptive RF management, integrated wireless intrusion detection, and a built-in firewall for role-based access control," said David S. Porter, the University of Rhode Island's Director of Media and Technology Services. "We have deployed the first 800 of what we expect to be a total of 1,500 802.11n access points, and ARM basically manages them for us by automatically addressing interference, 802.11b/g client conflicts, and other RF issues. That feature alone offered tremendous relief to our IT staff, who were freed to work on other projects."
ARM uses infrastructure-based controls to optimize the performance of Wi-Fi clients in real-time. Acting on their own, Wi-Fi clients do not always work cooperatively with other clients, or select the optimal band, channel, and access point. These issues are exacerbated in settings with densely packed users such as university classrooms, lecture halls and libraries. ARM uses a variety of techniques to control how Wi-Fi clients interact, thereby ensuring that data, voice, and video applications have sufficient network resources, including airtime, to operate properly.
"On the matter of security, we used to restrict access to the network using a very large access control list that was unwieldy to manage across independent access points," continued Porter. "Aruba provided a central management interface, with a single access control list, that is automatically pushed to every controller and access point. As with ARM, this feature significantly lowered IT staff workload. And it gave us much finer grained control over user access because we can now control by user, group, service, application, bandwidth consumption, among other parameters."
Identity-based security, Quality of Service control, and traffic management capabilities are provided by Aruba's policy-enforcement firewall network. The firewall classifies on the basis of user identity, device type, location, and time of day, and provides differentiated access for different classes of users. For example, voice traffic can be assigned a high priority and reserved bandwidth to ensure reliable delivery, while university guests might have limited available bandwidth and tight controls with respect to the sites and servers that can be accessed.
Additional information about Aruba's solutions for higher education can be found on-line at Aruba's Web site.
About Aruba Networks
People move. Networks must follow. Aruba securely delivers networks to users, wherever they work or roam, using a combination of award-winning solutions:
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-- Adaptive 802.11n Wi-Fi networks optimize themselves to ensure that
users are always within reach of mission-critical information. Rightsizing
expensive wired LANs by replacing them with high-speed 802.11n Wi-Fi
reduces both capital and operating expenses;
-- Identity-based security assigns access policies to users, enforcing
those policies whenever and wherever a network is accessed;
-- Remote networking solutions for branch offices, fixed telecommuters,
and satellite facilities ensures uninterrupted remote access to
applications;
-- Multi-vendor network management provides a single point of control
while managing both legacy and new wireless networks from Aruba and its
competitors.
The cost, convenience, and security benefits of our secure mobility solutions are fundamentally changing how and where we work. Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000� Index, Aruba is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions. To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ArubaNetworks.
� 2009 Aruba Networks, Inc. AirWave�, Aruba Networks�, Aruba Mobility Management System�, Bluescanner, For Wireless That Works�, Mobile Edge Architecture, People Move. Networks Must Follow., The All-Wireless Workplace Is Now Open For Business, RFprotect, Green Island, and The Mobile Edge Company� are trademarks of Aruba Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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Aruba Networks, Inc.
+1-408-754-8034
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Patty Oien
Breakaway Communications
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