Wireless News

Lawrence Technological Moves to 802.11n WiFi

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/19/10

Lawrence Technological University upgraded its wireless network with 802.11n WiFi arrays.

The Southfield, MI-based campus, which built the state's first campus-wide wireless system, has 11 buildings, 4,300 students, and 410 faculty members. The IT organization had found that professors would decline to use the WiFi technology in their classrooms because the previous implementation was undependable in a setting with so many users. The new deployment uses hardware from Xirrus.

"Since we are Lawrence Technological University, the administration here wanted the latest in technology," said Tim Chavis, director of IT. "Having the 'abgn' capability was a big selling point! The other part of it had to do with the number of access points we'd have to install.... Overall [with Xirrus] we have about one fourth the access points with a full implementation than we would have had with the other vendors."