Trapeze system replaces older Wi-Fi from various vendors

March 7, 2008 (Computerworld) Wi-Fi has become commonplace on college campuses, but the University of Minnesota is embarking on a five-year project to upgrade its Wi-Fi network to the much faster 802.11n standard. The $15 million upgrade would provide about 9,500 access points, one of the largest deployments to date. The first phase of the project, to begin in May, involves replacing 2,200 access points that have been in place for as long as nine years. The access points from  Cisco Systems, Inc., D-Link Corp. and others will be replaced with 802.11n APs from Trapeze Networks at a cost of about $3 million, said Louis Hammond, assistant director of networking and telecom at the university, in an interview today.

Trapeze beat 23 other bids in a rigorous RFP process, and won because of cost and Trapeze's ability to manage the overall Wi-Fi infrastructure centrally and in a secure manner, Hammond said. A key factor was that Trapeze has a planning tool called Ringmaster that allows the university to use computer-aided design drawings of buildings to immediately begin planning where to locate the APs for maximum coverage in 300 buildings with 1,300 floors, and serving 80,000 students, faculty and staf

Similarly, Trapeze Networks is using Wi-Fi for disaster response in schools—company director of product marketing David Cohen says an educational environment is perfect for that kind of deployment, since the same network that’s being used for student and faculty Internet access can support everything from video monitoring to emergency communications.

“To enable all the administrators, firemen, police captains, all those people, to communicate with each other on a wireless network, that is a tremendous resource,” he says.

To that end, Cohen says, it’s the interoperability that really makes Wi-Fi ideal in an emergency situation: any first responder with a Wi-Fi device can instantly access the network as needed.

“Wi-Fi uniquely offers one system with guaranteed interoperability,” Cohen says. “Everything just works together.”

Wireless reseller QoLcom has hit the ground running in 2008 with two early contract wins with vendor partner Trapeze Networks. QoLcom has announced that both London South Bank University and Chester Zoo have selected it to implement Trapeze’s Smart Mobile wireless network solution.

Trapeze WLAN gear at Manchester Airport disseminates wireless services to employees as well as travelers, cafes, bookstores and other shops inside the airport.