High School Gives Meru Networks Top Marks

With the help of a wireless LAN from Meru Networks (News - Alert), students at St Bernard's Catholic High School in Rotherham, Yorkshire can access Internet course materials instantly from any classroom in the building. The school was looking to provide reliable access for its 670 students throughout the school to enable subject teachers to use Internet resources in any lesson.

 

Convincing St Bernard's School that wireless LAN equipment from Meru Networks would succeed where other equipment had failed, UK-based Networks by Wireless won a competitive tender. Networks by Wireless assured the school that it can provide a network the school could trust, with this new agreement.

 

Aside from having a networked PC and an interactive whiteboard in each class, the school had a new wired LAN installed this year. The school was looking to give each student network access, but was not convinced wireless LAN was up to the job.

 

All this changed when there was a demand for student access. Because wired connections are simply impractical when a huge number of laptops, wheeled to the classroom in a trolley, are handed to students at the beginning of a lesson. So, to tender for a reliable wireless LAN that would allow instant access anywhere in the school, the school issued an invitation to network companies.

 

Meru won the tender with its fourth generation single-channel wireless LAN. The access points of this LAN are placed on a single radio channel, which offers the best connection possible. Meru manages the network centrally with its award-winning Air Traffic Control technology and System Director Software. Networks by Wireless installed the network quickly during the school's summer holiday.

 

“We had tried a wireless LAN before, with a few access points in a small area, but we took it out a year ago, because it was unreliable,” said Paul Clark, strategy leader at ICT at St. Bernard’s. After this experience, Paul was skeptical that any wireless LAN could meet his school's requirements: “We had decided to move away from wireless and get things cabled in.”