Ruckus Wireless, Inc. (NYSE: RKUS) today announced that Christ University, a leading university in India, has selected its Smart Wi-Fi technology to provide campus-wide, high-speed indoor Wi-Fi access for over 12,000 students, faculty members and staff members on their campus. Christ University has deployed more than 350 Ruckus ZoneFlex™ 7341 802.11n access points and a ZoneDirector™ 3000 wireless LAN (WLAN) controller for complete network management and system-wide visibility, and administration of the entire infrastructure, providing detailed reporting, statistics, troubleshooting, and client trending information. Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi is the first technology that gives Christ University ubiquitous campus-wide Wi-Fi Internet access for a variety of online learning and Internet access, all in a cost-effective way.
Higher education institutions around the world are under pressure to deliver full campus-wide wireless coverage for highly mobile users armed with multiple wireless-only devices like smartphones and tablets. Providing reliable connectivity, security, and authentication without new IT resources, and with limited budgets has become a major challenge. According to ABI Research, global spending on wireless LAN equipment in the higher education space is expected to reach over USD $837 million by 2013. Driving the adoption of Wi-Fi within higher education is the increased use of video over Wi-Fi for a variety of uses, spanning from peer-to-peer student and student-to-teacher communications to video streaming of lectures, IPTV and CCTV applications.
Founded in 1969, the Christ University campus is spread over 25 acres and is situated in the center of Bangalore city. It provides a comprehensive range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs in diverse fields like Law, Business Administration, Commerce, Management, Humanities, Sciences, and Social Sciences. In addition, it offers many continual educational programs for many popular disciplines, including Business Administration, Computer Application, and Hotel Management.
Father F. Joshy P. George, director of Information Technology and Data Management for Christ University said, “Information and network technologies are redefining the learning experience around the world at a very rapid pace. Education is no longer exclusive to the classroom.” He continued, “All students at Christ University enjoy unlimited and ubiquitous Wi-Fi access in every nook and corner of the campus. Students are required to carry a laptop, and they are able to access online classes they have signed up with. Reliable Wi-Fi networks are absolutely critical to the total learning experience. In the past we had deployed Wi-Fi routers to feed this requirement, but they were unable to maintain stable Wi-Fi connections and coverage was spotty. After a thorough search in the market and weeks of thorough trials with challenging video applications, Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi stood out. Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi met what Christ University had been looking for – it offers us ubiquitous coverage and reliable performance at an affordable price. We are very satisfied with Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi.”
The new Ruckus Wi-Fi networks are being used to run a wide range of applications such as e-learning, video conferencing, IPTV, live and pre-recorded lecture streaming, guest access, student information systems, interactive student/teacher communications and Internet access within student housing facilities.
“Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi provides the reliability needed for the new types of applications demanded by education institutions,” said Sudarshan Boosupalli, general manager of India & SAARC Operations for Ruckus Wireless. “Proliferation of mobile devices inspires higher education institutions to create a more open and efficient environment to students. That said, we are proud to be chosen by Christ University to build their campus Wi-Fi networks. Our Smart Wi-Fi products that incorporate key technologies like BeamFlex enable higher education customers to fully leverage the potential of online learning in the mobile Internet era.”
