CASE STUDY
One of the most important learning centres in the Middle East , American University of Sharjah ( AUS ) was seeing an explosion of Wi-Fi users and devices accessing its wireless network . However AUS ’ existing infrastructure , based on a variety of conventional Wi-Fi technology , was struggling to keep up with growing capacity , coverage
AUS OVERVIEW and performance demands . The flagship institution of University City , an education district in the emirate of Sharjah , United Arab Emirates , AUS is an independent , not-for-profit , co-educational institution of higher education formed on the American model in 1997 by His Highness Sheikh Dr . Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qassimi . AUS has a multicultural campus with a student body of over 5,750 students with a campus that covers over 200 acres with dozens of buildings including student dormitories , administrative offices and lecture halls .
Founded in 1997 by His Highness Sheikh Dr . Sultan Bin Mohammad Al Qassimi , the American University of Sharjah is a leading educational institution in the Gulf region with over 5700 students and staff and a campus spanning more than 200 acres .
Requirements
• Carrier grade Wi-Fi scalability and reliability under all conditions
• Support for a variety of different environments such as student accommodations , lecture halls , outdoor spaces and administrative buildings
• Simple and unified network management that eases WLAN administration
• Elegant and easy to provision BYOD framework
Previously , American University of Sharjah had only deployed Wi-Fi within selected administrative buildings . By early 2012 with the dramatic increase in the number of Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices and a growing student community now armed with multiple smart mobile devices , the deployment of ubiquitous Wi-Fi across the campus became a necessity . However , the university ’ s legacy network was developed in an ad hoc fashion using conventional Wi-Fi technology not designed or well-suited for dense user environments . To this end , the legacy Wi-Fi network at AUS struggled to deliver reliable and ubiquitous signal coverage . Dropped connections , erratic performance and spotty coverage were frequent issues for the university .
Consequently , AUS realised that to scale capacity , coverage and Wi-Fi network performance , it needed more advanced Wi-Fi technology that could provide
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