December 02, 2003
OHLONE COLLEGE GRADUATES FROM WIRED TO WIRELESS USING THE TRAPEZE NETWORKS WLAN MOBILITY SYSTEM
Secure Wireless Connectivity is Provided to Faculty, Students, Staff and Administration PLEASANTON, Calif. — December 3, 2003 — Trapeze Networks™ today announced that Ohlone College, located in Fremont, California, is providing its faculty and staff with wireless local area network (WLAN) access by installing the Trapeze Mobility System™ throughout campus. By mid 2004, Ohlone College plans to rollout wireless connectivity to all students and to all of the labs on campus.
The overall goal of this project was to design and implement a WLAN that would provide a consistent and satisfying user experience while maintaining a high degree of data security. Mobility for Ohlone's students, faculty and staff was the most important factor in their selection process.
Ohlone College's Information Services (IS) staff researched various Wi-Fi-certified wireless technologies for more than a year. The IS staff wanted to be sure the WLAN solution it chose was based on current and emerging industry standards and provided optimal user and network security.
The IS staff wanted the WLAN of choice to support the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication system used at the college via client 802.1X authentication. To protect user data, the WLAN had to generate and manage dynamic keys for all the encryption protocols — dynamic Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) with rotating broadcast/multicast keys, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The WLAN solution of choice would also integrate seamlessly with its existing wired infrastructure.
Another key requirement for Ohlone was a WLAN tool suite that could perform pre- and post-deployment planning as well as automate configuration, radio frequency (RF) topology mapping and verification, and day-to-day management of the WLAN. The IS staff also wanted a software management tool that would easily identify rogue access points and unauthorized ad hoc networks.
"After researching many products and vendors, we selected the Trapeze Networks WLAN Mobility System," said Douglas Burns, Director of Information Services for Ohlone College. "It solved all of our WLAN needs, is packed with features and has the most secure architecture of all the WLAN solutions."
"Trapeze worked closely with us since the early development stages of our campus-wide WLAN," said Burns. "Trapeze also provided us with excellent in-depth training and 24 x 7 access to its technical team, which has made a big impact on us because we have small team with limited resources."
The first WLAN rollout was in Ohlone's Hyman Hall, a two-story building with about 45,000 square feet of classroom, lab and office space. Using the Trapeze RingMaster™ tool suite, the IS staff quickly realized how simple and efficient it made the planning phase.
The Ohlone IS staff first identified how many users needed WLAN access and where they would need it. RingMaster then automatically planned out the RF coverage area and RF topology, while compensating for RF obstacles on both floors that could affect signal strength and coverage. RingMaster also showed the IS staff where to place Trapeze Mobility Points™.
"Automatically, the Trapeze RingMaster tool showed us exactly where we needed to install Mobility Points to get the best possible coverage for the 400 users we planned for," Burns noted. "We quickly realized how indispensable RingMaster would be in designing the rest of the campus WLAN, modifying coverage areas and adding more Mobility Points as our needs grow."
RingMaster's built-in library of RF attenuators — representing construction materials like concrete, drywall, wood, steel structures and various types of glass — helped to overcome potential signal obstacles, such as the steel I-beams and concrete that separated the two floors of Hyman Hall, and automatically configured a deployable RF coverage and capacity plan.
Sixteen Trapeze Mobility Points provide coverage on both floors of Hyman Hall and are connected to two Trapeze Mobility Exchanges™ located in the main server room. The RingMaster tool suite showed that the RF signal bleed-through between floors was minimal due to the heavy concrete and steel structure of the building.
Mobility Points on both floors are optimized for capacity to support a medium load of 250 users with no noticeable degradation and a heavy load of 400 users. They are automatically configured to select the channel with the least level of RF interference. The Mobility Points also utilize new Category 6 twisted-pair cable runs to connect to the main server room on the first floor.
About Ohlone College
Established in 1965, Ohlone College serves the cities of Fremont and Newark, California. The main campus is located in Fremont on Mission Boulevard just off Highway 680 on a beautiful 534-acre hillside site just south of historical Mission San Jose. Ohlone College also operates a Newark Center, located on Cedar Boulevard in Newark just off Highway 880. Ohlone College is part of the Ohlone Community College District (the name of the district was changed from Fremont-Newark College District to Ohlone Community College District in December 2002).
About Trapeze Networks
Trapeze Networks delivers the power of business applications and services to the mobile enterprise workforce. The company's wireless LAN Mobility System enhances productivity, introduces new efficiencies and accelerates business response time by delivering secure mobility to users, pre and post deployment planning and management tools to IT, and seamless integration between wired and wireless. In the first four months of shipping its WLAN Mobility System, Trapeze has been the recipient of five industry awards in recognition of its product and technology strength. Founded in March 2002, Trapeze raised $50 million in venture funding to date and is headquartered in Pleasanton, Calif., U.S.A. For more information, please visit www.trapezenetworks.com.
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