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Concordia University Installs Canada's First 802.11n Wireless Network on College Campus
University Continues History of Firsts With Cisco Technology -- Deploys VoIP Over Wireless Network, Delivers Mobile Phone Service via Outdoor Wireless Mesh Network
| Source: Cisco Systems, Inc.
SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - January 30, 2008) - Cisco® (NASDAQ : CSCO ) announced today that
Montreal's Concordia University has added the next chapter to its history
as one of Canada's leading technology trailblazers by deploying the
country's first 802.11n wireless network on a university campus and
incorporating it as part of a larger, innovative indoor-outdoor wireless
mobility infrastructure.
The adoption of Cisco's next-generation 802.11n wireless technology allows
Concordia University to expand its campus-wide wireless network. Part of
the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, the 802.11n solution offers improved
reliability and faster throughput for existing 802.11g implementations.
The new 802.11n network represents the university's latest milestone in
adopting cutting-edge information technology from Cisco. Concordia
University, which hosts about 40,000 students, deployed Canada's first
wireless local-area network in 2001, and in 2003 it was the country's first
higher-education institution to roll out Voice over Internet Protocol
(VoIP) across a wireless infrastructure. Today, Concordia University is
enhancing its indoor wireless network with Wi-Fi-certified 802.11n
Aironet® 1250 Series Access Points from Cisco and managing a
first-of-its-kind service-oriented outdoor mesh network that offers mobile
phone and data storage services. Although they are two distinct
initiatives, together they strengthen the school's ability to provide
reliable wireless performance and innovative mobile services to students
and staff.
For instance, the university acts as a telecommunications service provider
to the campus community. Although accessing the indoor 802.11n network is
free, the university charges subscribers a monthly rate of CAN $8.99 for
outdoor connections. Concordia is already working on a plan that will allow
students who are physically on campus to seamlessly offload calls from
their mobile provider's network, allowing them to avoid burning minutes
from their mobile phone plans. This transition between the campus and
mobile carriers' networks, various mobile applications and mobile devices
(called seamless mobile collaboration, or SMC) represents a novel approach
to supporting everything from general student communications and ubiquitous
connectivity to campus operations and emergency preparedness.
In addition to being a service provider for wireless mobile
telecommunications, Concordia University allows students and staff to
subscribe to virtualized desktops, which minimizes software and hardware
replacement costs as well as the number of potential attack vectors that
viruses and other security threats can exploit. The IT team stores data for
subscribers and provides necessary applications on demand.
"Our IT organization serves as a service provider, a storage provider, a
software provider, and more," said Andrew McAusland, associate vice
president of Instructional and Information Technology Services at Concordia
University. "We make a conscientious effort to provide our students with
advanced services. This represents a significant part of our vision and
commitment to all Concordians. Our work with Cisco, particularly the
combination of 802.11n wireless networking, VoIP over WLAN, outdoor mesh
and seamless mobile collaboration technologies, brings this vision to
life."
All of these services represent industry firsts within Canada's education
community. Concordia University's penchant for deploying first-of-its-kind
technology parallels Cisco's recent innovation in the wireless mobility
arena, particularly in the area of outdoor mesh and 802.11n. Cisco is the
first vendor to ship 802.11n products globally, and entering 2008 it was
the only vendor delivering actual products to the marketplace. According to
the latest market-share reports from Dell'Oro and Synergy, Cisco commands
64 percent of the wireless local-area network (WLAN) space, seven times its
nearest competitor's share. Gartner's Wireless LAN Infrastructure Magic
Quadrant, released December 20, 2007, pegs Cisco as an industry leader as
well.
McAusland said Cisco's history of leadership in the wireless networking and
IT space fuels his confidence to adopt new-age technology.
"Anytime you become an early adopter, the integrity of a vendor's track
record in a particular technology space, as well as the investment
protection provided by that technology, is absolutely critical," McAusland
said. "With 802.11n, Cisco meets those requirements. They were there when
we deployed our first WLAN, when we rolled out VoIP over that WLAN, when we
established an outdoor mesh network. And now they are helping us be the
vanguard for 802.11n within our country's education community. Our 802.11n
deployment is live and operational as we speak. Using Cisco's latest
offerings give us a differentiable advantage that pays off for our campus
community."
Shipped this fall, Cisco's Aironet 1250 Series Access Points are the
industry's first Wi-Fi-certified 802.11n draft 2.0 access points and first
commercially available product to have participated in the Wi-Fi Alliance
802.11n draft 2.0 testbed. In addition to the increase in throughput,
McAusland said Cisco's multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO) technology helps
his team achieve backward compatibility with older b- and g-based access
points to provide highly reliable wireless coverage, particularly for
challenging radio frequency environments within the university's environs.
"There have been a lot of claims and speculation about prospective 802.11n
deployments, but Concordia University's live 802.11n network is showing
that actions speak louder than words," said Ben Gibson, Cisco's senior
director of mobility solutions. "While 802.11n represents a significant
wave of the future, the university knows that 802.11n is not the beginning
and end of its innovative scope. The university realizes that the sum is
greater than its parts. Concordia University is showing the higher
education and broader business community a successful model for weaving
802.11n into the fabric of a larger, comprehensive indoor-outdoor mobility
infrastructure."
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