Washington County Public Schools Ramps Up with Xirrus Wi-Fi Solutions

Xirrus, Inc. announced the deployment of its high performance Wi-Fi Arrays across Washington County Public Schools (WCPS), located in Hagerstown Maryland which is in the Western part of Maryland, as part of the Tri-State area including nearby Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

School officials said the Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays was the Wi-Fi solution able to deliver the necessary bandwidth, user capacity along, and interoperability with their Novell solution and VOIP phone system.

"Our school district has 2,500 employees servicing over 20,000 K-12 students across 46 campuses - selecting the right Wi-Fi solution was critical to our future online learning, not to mention the ability to better utilize our existing facilities and resources," said Dave Mundey, Manager of Technology & Telecommunication Services at WCPS. "Besides providing ample bandwidth and user capacity, we have a unique Novell implementation that no Wi-Fi vendor could get working wirelessly - we tested quite a few Wi-Fi access points, but the only one that worked seamlessly with Novell was Xirrus. Because each Array is able to do authentication, this allows a Novell user to login directly from the client, which means end users do not know they are on a wireless network as it acts just like a wired network."

"It is important, when deploying a Wi-Fi network, that the network connection is simple and transparent for the end users as they have limited time in the classrooms to deal with technology. The Wi-Fi Arrays were installed without fuss and have proven to deliver the same user experience wirelessly, opening the door to online learning and collaboration for our students and staff," added Dave.

"The other week we performed our first State of Maryland mandatory testing online," said Arnold E. Hammann, Director of Information Management & Instructional Technology at WCPS. "We used the Xirrus wireless solution with laptop carts across the entire district - all went extremely well. A single Wi-Fi Array could support an entire cart of computers doing online testing - and no one could tell the difference between hardwired and wireless laptops. There were many naysayers before the tests saying that it could not be done, but thanks to the Xirrus Arrays we proved that the online testing is possible and far better than wired testing due to the mobility a Wi-Fi deployment affords."

"Like many other schools have realized Wi-Fi can and will replace wired switching to the desktop, making networks more flexible and cost efficient," said Paul Kersse, Area Vice President at Xirrus. "The days of overcrowded computer labs have ended-students are able to access valuable educational applications and databases from wherever they work-freeing valuable resources and opening more possibilities for schools. And unlike other Wi-Fi vendors, we are committed to delivering the best possible products and services to help our customers succeed - through ISO to CWNA certification, you can rest assured you'll be working with and learning from experts in the field of quality management and networking."

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