Wireless

The new 21st Century schools are collaborative, interactive and learning occurs anywhere, any time. Testing and reporting is done online. All sorts of multi-media are accessed across the IT network. Many schools like yours are implementing one-to-one learning and self-paced learning solutions. This means more voice and video applications will be used in schools as well. It all means, you must have a strong, secure wireless network.

There are also many new wireless devices that will be added including wireless cameras and phones, all adding to the  administration of security workload.

New wireless standards have been ratified. You do need to implement the latest wireless technology standard (802.11n) rather than extend your current Ethernet wired network. You may need to reconsider if you have already adopted earlier wireless standards, which are much slower and less robust. Security is the biggest issue that schools will face with wireless moving forward.

Whether your school is about to implement a wireless network or make changes to your existing wireless infrastructure you need to ensure you have reviewed the security features of the WLAN. Using virtualisation LANS, you can have different school groups using different applications. This means you have greater control. You need to be able to scale (add more users) easily. Your staff, students and guests must all have different secure levels of access and you must be able to protect them all from any sort of external or internal attack.

Your Wireless Check List:

• Does your school have old buildings so you need to install the right wireless network?
• Has your school introduced more mobile solutions i.e. tablets, notebooks, laptop carts, eLearning and community portals?
• Will your school start to think about not only data coming through the network but also video and voice?
• Can your students log on to the wireless LAN anywhere in the school – in the library, class, common areas?
• Do you want to save money on buying access points, have stronger bandwidth and make your IT budget stretch further?
• Can you block unwanted users easily and allow guests access as well?
• Does your IT administrator have a single central interface to all wireless access points and controllers, whether spread across a single building or a large campus?
• Are your Applications expanding all the time so the administrator must be able to easily add new applications across the wireless network
• Do you have to allow for roaming students who can disconnect and reconnect easily and quickly?
• Do you have Channel Layering in your wireless network?

For more information on wireless please enter your email below and hit the submit button: