Colubris Networks, the leading global provider of intelligent wireless LANs (WLANs) for enterprises and service providers, today announced that the University of the South, one of the nations top liberal arts colleges, has deployed Colubris to provide wireless access to students, faculty and community members. The University of the South selected Colubris because of its ease-of-use, guest access features, variety of deployment options, and ability to easily and cost-effectively upgrade to the new 802.11n wireless standard.
The University of the South, known familiarly as Sewanee, enrolls more than 1,500 students. It is located on 10,000 acres atop the Cumberland Plateau between Nashville and Chattanooga, Tenn. The school had a wireless network in place to increase student and faculty satisfaction by allowing easy network access from a range of locations across campus. However, when the universitys previous wireless solution provider folded, the school saw an opportunity to find a new provider that could accommodate its current needs as well as future plans.
The University of the South extensively evaluated several other WLAN vendors, including Siemens, HP and Nortel, but eventually selected Colubris for its wireless network. Colubris provided the university with flexible traffic processing capabilities that allowed the school to centralize certain WLAN traffic for security, while other traffic is forwarded by intelligent access points at the edge of the network for optimum performance. In addition, Colubris offered single-radio or dual-radio access points for maximum coverage across campus, had a history of successful deployments in the education market, its products were easier to use than the competitive offerings and it provided unique access control capabilities all at an attractive price.
With Colubris, the University of the South can now provide network connectivity to its residence halls, academic buildings and support buildings, including those that are difficult to wire because of their age or remote location. As a result, the university is able to offer widespread high-performance wireless access, a key recruitment tool for attracting the best students and faculty.
With our broad, sprawling campus and stone buildings that are more than a century old, its easy for our infrastructure costs to skyrocket. We needed to find a wireless solution that provided us with several deployment options to contain these costs, said Geno Schlichting, communications specialist at University of the South. Colubris allowed us to cost-effectively deploy reliable wireless throughout our campus. In addition, the Colubris solution is easily upgradeable, which will be important as we look to explore the capabilities of the new 802.11n wireless standard in the coming year.
The University of the South has deployed 55 Colubris MultiService Access Points (MAPs) and one Colubris MultiService Controller (MSC), and plans to deploy up to 170 MAPs once the deployment is complete. The single-radio MAP-320s and dual-radio MAP-330s offer plug and play and centralized management features. Once deployed, the MAPs securely and automatically connect to the Colubris MSC, which allows the university to manage the access points from a single location.
Over the next year, the University of the South is planning to broaden its use of the Colubris solution. In addition to deploying the MAPs at additional points throughout campus, the school is also planning to deploy Colubris 802.11n access point, the MAP-625, at its new science center, scheduled to open for the 2008 school year. By deploying the MAP-625, the University of the South will be able to enjoy more than four times the performance of current wireless networks, but without the disruptive upgrades that users of other wireless LAN solutions will need to undergo. The university is also evaluating the Colubris RF Manager to detect security vulnerabilities and is planning to start using the Colubris Visitor Management Tool (VMT) to provide guest access.
Universities are among the most forward-thinking institutions when it comes to technology and thus, need a future-proof wireless infrastructure to support the growing number of applications they deploy, said Rob Scott, president and CEO of Colubris. By deploying Colubris, the University of the South is getting a wireless infrastructure that will support new applications and initiatives, without significant upgrades or investments.
About Colubris
Colubris Networks is the leading global provider of intelligent wireless networks (WLANs) for enterprises and service providers. Its optimized WLAN switching systems deliver unmatched bandwidth efficiency, seamless mobility and secure, easy access for thousands of organizations and 40 million users worldwide. With its future proof architecture, Colubris provides organizations with the most cost-effective migration from legacy standards to 802.11n. Its systems unify and integrate with existing network infrastructures, as well as security and management systems. Colubris numerous recognitions include Red Herrings top 100 private companies in North America, Fierce Wireless Fierce 15, CRNs Emerging Tech Vendors and Mobile Trax Mobility Award.
