The project completed by Dan:
In the October half term, Dan completed a Wi-Fi refresh project at a school in Bath. We first run a survey of the area to be covered, this may include a heat map of the school and additional network cabling may be required. Wireless technology and standards are constantly being improved and more of a demand is put on wireless devices in teaching environments. A lot of school software is now cloud based and that relies on a decent wireless connection at all times. Dan installed 21 new Ubiquiti UniFi nanoHD wireless access points and a cloud controller. The new 802.11ac Wave2 access points replaced older ageing technology in the school – 802.11a/n. The new access points allow up to 200 concurrent users and a high throughput. With the cloud controller it allows the IT staff in the school, and our technicians to manage the wireless network from anywhere.
Overcoming the problems:
The school has a café that’s open to the public and takes card payments over Wi-Fi. That can present problems, but we setup VLAN’s and segregated the guest Wi-Fi and put other configuration in place ensuring that the network is PCI-compliant (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) which need to be adhered to.
Other technology that we manage in the organisation:
The school have 70 iPads which us the Wireless network, which we manage via an MDM (Mobile Device Management) solution, and hundreds of computers/laptops. This year we completed a separate project for the school imaging and upgrading all computers to Windows 10. We also installed the school’s servers and disaster recovery solution, and manage the Office 365 setup.
