Virginia District Rolls Out Multi-Campus Wireless
The Isle of Wight County School District (IWCSD) in Smithfield, VA has implemented an Aerohive wireless local area network throughout its school campuses. The district enrolls 5,500 students and employs about 900 faculty and staff in two high schools, two middle schools, and five elementary schools.
To date the district has installed more than 200 wireless access points throughout the nine school campuses, with future expansions presenting minimal challenges. According to a spokesperson, IWCSD chose the Aerohive network for the flexibility it promises as the district continues to upgrade its technology infrastructure.
"We chose Aerohive over the competition because of their controller-less architecture," said Joshua Spaugh, IWCSD director of technology. "Going controller-less was important because it meant we were avoiding the issue of having a single point of failure. We really wanted to avoid that hit to the network."
In addition, the forward-looking technology offers capabilities that will make future video and voice technology upgrades and improvements easy to implement and manage.
"Performance is important. It just never made sense to route all the traffic to the same device over the network because you really lose speed with that approach. I just didn't see the benefits of a controller-based WLAN when Aerohive could provide the intelligence and control without the controller."
Finally, the new network will allow the district to comply with a state mandate that requires that students be able to take the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) exams online.
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Scott Aronowitz is a freelance writer based in Las Vegas. He has covered the technology, advertising, and entertainment sectors for seven years. He can be reached here.