Smarter Wi-Fi Fosters The Learning Experience

It’s a Required Course of Action for Education

Faster, more dependable Wi-Fi connectivity that’s affordable is fundamental. It must cover large campuses, yet reach every corner of a classroom. It must support multimedia applications while providing secure connectivity for staff, students, and guests. Limited budgets and IT staff mean that educators need a new approach. Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi 802.11ac access points pass the test with flying colors.

Instead of spending more and more money to expand their wired networks, many of our customers have invested in an all-wireless workplace and enjoyed unprecedented savings.

Dealing With High Density

Patented adaptive antenna technology gets users on and off the wireless network quickly. In addition, capabilities including: client load balancing, airtime fairness, band steering, and per user rate limiting ensures hundreds of users can access a single access point that delivers reliable and fast Wi-Fi connectivity.

“The need for higher client density and wireless bandwidth is skyrocketing. AC lets us serve two or three times more concurrent client connections at much higher data rates and stay ahead of the client technology curve.”
Dan Maclise
Lead Network Engineer, Lodi Unified School District

Campus Coverage: Here, There, Everywhere

K-12 school campuses range from one large, vintage-built location to a more modern multibuilding construction. So, getting good Wi-Fi coverage to every nook and cranny of each classroom has been a real challenge. Ruckus ZoneFlex products deliver the best possible Wi-Fi coverage using high-gain directional antenna arrays. Patented BeamFlex™ technology directs signals toward associated clients, picking the best performing path and constantly routing signals around interference. ZoneFlex delivers better coverage using fewer APs and far fewer dollars. Schools can now take Wi-Fi to places where it’s never been before — simply, easily and affordably

Secure and Automated Device Enablement

Ruckus Cloudpath bridges the gap betweenenterprise-grade security and personal devices to create a secure and simplified Wi-Fi experience that allows BYOD to be adopted in a scalable, secure, and user-friendly manner. Cloudpath utilizes standards-based security to work with existing infrastructure and provide full functionality with any Wi-Fi solution. Cloudpath solutions delivers secure, reliable connectivity around the globe. A growing need across education is the ability to easily and securely on-board many different devices. Cloudpath provides industry-first support for Chromebooks, the fastest growing in-classroom platform.

“Our goal was to push these boxes to their limit to see where they’d break by throwing as many unicast HD video streams at them as they could bear. With Ruckus 710, we simply couldn’t break it and were able to push more than 90 clients streaming HD videos to a single AP. We just ran out of clients.”
Aaron Heath
Network Specialist, Columbia Public Schools

No Ethernet? No Problem

For many educational institutions, Ethernet is not ubiquitous. What about portables, cafeterias, auditoriums, assembly halls and stadiums? Unlike other WLAN solutions, the Ruckus ZoneFlex system employs SmartMesh Networking, allowing schools to easily add Wi-Fi by simply plugging APs into a power outlet. This eliminates adding additional Ethernet cabling and unnecessary expenses. An advanced smart antenna array ensures unprecedented reliability for the mesh backbone, minimizing packet loss, steering signals over the fastest paths, and increasing range between mesh nodes.

Ruckus Makes the Grade at Columbia Public Schools

Columbia Public Schools centered in Columbia, Missouri, services more than 18k students. The district covers over 300 square miles between St. Louis and Kansas City. CPS is accredited with Distinction by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education supporting over 30 K-12 schools. Columbia understood that in order to elevate both the learning and teaching experience, they would need:

• Fast and reliable Wi-Fi access to deliver digital content
• Higher performance, higher capacity, and district-wide indoor/outdoor Wi-Fi infrastructure
• Infrastructure that can support a range of applications and services
• Great wireless connectivity to meet interactive curriculum needs

Columbia deployed more than 1,400 Ruckus ZoneFlex R710 802.11ac Wave 2 APs
and Ruckus SmartZone controllers. With this new infrastructure, Columbia was able
to increase the number of concurrent clients supported by AP while improving signal
strength and wireless reliability. With Ruckus Wireless, Columbia was able to futureproof their network to meet growing student and faculty needs.

Smarter Wi-Fi Optimized for IP-Based Video

Video has become an essential application within K-12 environments. IP-based video cameras and streaming IP-based video content over Wi-Fi is now taking center stage. Our heritage as a company has been focused on supporting IP-based video over Wi-Fi. Through the use of our patented adaptive antenna array and heuristics-based traffic classification and prioritization, the Ruckus ZoneFlex system delivers flicker-free video to laptops, tablets, and even televisions. Our products and technology have been uniquely designed to support latency-sensitive traffic types such as streaming HD video.

“For CPS, the Ruckus products spoke for themselves. But more importantly, we felt the Ruckus philosophy about delivering the best possible Wi-Fi performance and reliability within high dense client environments mirrored our own.”

Dr. Christine Diggs
Director of Technology Services
Columbia Public Schools

We’re feeling the love from a marquee list of WORLD-RENOWNED CUSTOMERS

Eliminate recurring broadband costs with point-to-multipoint, long range Wi-Fi

Many schools pay exorbitant costs for running fixed broadband lines to each school or site. New 5 GHz 802.11n high-performance bridges effectively eliminate these recurring costs — saving schools tens of thousands of dollars each year. A pair of Wi-Fi bridges can deliver up to 190 Mbps at 1.5 kilometers and offers performance up to 50 Mbps at 10 km (LoS).

The Ruckus ZoneFlex WLAN system configures in minutes so you’re on time and under budget.

Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi Delivers Education’s Most Flexible Deployment Options

INTERACTIVE CLASSROOMS, BYOD, VOIP, IP VOD, IPTV STREAMING, GUEST NETWORKING, STAFF ADMINISTRATION, OUTDOOR EVENTS

Complete Portfolio for EDUCATION