Wi-Fi Networks

The "Whys" and "Hows" of Deploying Wi-Fi Networks

Ubiquitous Wi-Fi across an enterprise or campus is a very positive and exciting experience for your students, faculty, staff and visitors to your institution. Having instant access to the internet with respect to emails and other IT services irrespective of location can dramatically change the way your constituents live, work, study, learn, and play.

Data from the 2009 Campus Computing Project Conducted by Queue Edge Nigeria Limited revealed that 5% of colleges and universities increased their campus IT budges for wireless.The expansion of wireless networks on campus mirrors the explosive growth of wireless in the consumer and corporate sectors over the past three years is visible.Consequently, it should be no surprise that students and faculty come to campus expecting their college or university to provide the same wireless connectivity that they experience elsewhere in Nigeria today.

The Challenges: Why Many Enterprise and Institutions Lag in Wi-Fi Deployment

As mentioned above, wireless switching enables effective deployment of required AP capacity for supporting large populations in a single location. Through central control of frequency and power, large numbers of APs can be placed in a given geography increasing its capacity to the desired level. It should be noted that in especially high-density areas, wireless address space management will be heavily stressed. Due to the transient, mobile nature of wireless users, wireless network addresses can be quickly consumed. You can avoid problems by ensuring that you have extra address capacity in each wireless subnet coupled with short lease times for those addresses

Swift Networks unifying Security measure.

Deploying Swift networks wireless switching architecture can simplify integration with existing authentication systems providing one unified model for network authentication and authorization. Through support of the 802.1x protocol coupled with a captive portal interface, Swift Networks makes provision for switches to work in concert with existing, centralized authentication systems to deliver a common methodology for billing, authentication and authorization. Gone are the days of having to maintain and synchronize multiple databases. In addition, provides a mechanism for mapping SSIDs and their associated traffic to individual VLANs further separating groups and services from unauthorized access or unwanted interaction. The ability to authenticate by individual user also has the effect of strengthening resistance to denial-of-service attacks for any given service. Of course, following the standard, Swift Networks has a robust protection system for data through its support of all Wi-Fi encryption standards. Swift Networks takes securing communications one-step further by also providing VPN termination within the switch irrespective of the method /protocol involved in backhaul.