St Bernard's High School, Rotherham, gives Meru Networks' & Networks by Wireless top marks

Meru WLAN provides reliable access to get students on line in all subjects

IP08, Earls Court, London, UK - Wednesday, 1st October 2008 - Pupils at St Bernard's Catholic High School in Rotherham, Yorkshire can access Internet course materials instantly from any classroom in the building, thanks to a wireless LAN from Meru Networks.

The school wanted to provide reliable access for its 670 students throughout the school, so subject teachers can use Internet resources in any lesson, without having to move the class into a dedicated IT suite. The wireless LAN had to be reliable, and able to support up to 64 laptops at once.

"Whole classes of students can access the network at the same time without interruption," said Paul Clark, Strategy leader for ICT at St Bernard's. "This network gives more flexible access to our ICT facility, and will allow us to get laptops into all curriculum areas."
 
UK based Networks by Wireless won a competitive tender, convincing St Bernard's School that wireless LAN equipment from Meru Networks would succeed where other equipment had failed, and provide a network the school could trust.

The school has a new wired LAN, installed this year, and each classroom has a networked PC and an interactive whiteboard. Paul wanted to go further, and give each student network access, but was not convinced wireless LANs were up to the job.

"We had tried a wireless LAN before, with a few access points in a small area, but we took it out a year ago, because it was unreliable," said Paul. After this experience, Paul was sceptical that any wireless LAN could meet his school's requirements: "We had decided to move away from wireless and get things cabled in."

The demands of pupil access changed that. When a large number of laptops, wheeled to the classroom in a trolley, are handed to students at the beginning of a lesson, wired connections are simply impractical. So the school issued an invitation to network companies, to tender for a reliable wireless LAN that would allow instant access anywhere in the school.

The winner of that tender, Meru's fourth generation single-channel wireless LAN, avoids the unreliability and interference issues common place with legacy wireless LANs.  Access points are placed on a single radio channel, eliminating the need for costly channel planning.  Meru's coordinated access points ensure bandwidth is shared efficiently, everyone gets the best connection possible, and the network is managed centrally with its award-winning Air Traffic Control technology and System Director software.

"Our biggest misgivings were that Meru's single channel architecture was different to every other wireless LAN vendor," said Paul. His technicians evaluated the product, before it was set up by Networks by Wireless. 

The network was installed quickly by Networks by Wireless during the school's summer holiday, and was running smoothly before the pupils returned in September. Most vendors' equipment requires a detailed site survey to position the radios and avoid interference, but with Meru's single-channel architecture, that wasn't necessary: "The wireless part just worked," says Paul. "The hardest part of the installation was upgrading the network with Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) injectors to drive the access points."

The network is future-proof, if the school needs faster network access in future, says Paul: "We can upgrade to 802.11n when we need it - but 802.11abg meets our current needs." 

Company contact: 
Rachna Ahlawat 
Meru Networks, Inc.  
+1 650-329-1590
rahlawat@merunetworks.com  

Agency contacts:
Rose Ross
Omarketing Limited (for Meru Networks - UK, Ireland and rest of EMEA)
+ 44 (0) 208 8255 5225
+44 (0)7976 154 597
rose@omarketing.co.uk

Laurence Colin (for Meru Networks - France)
RP&Co. Paris
+33 (0)1 40 20 04 50 
laurence.colin@rpandco.fr

Susan Rose
Rose Kommunikation & PR (for Meru Networks - Nordics)
+46 (0)735 81 35 40
susan@susanrose.se

Janis Ulevich
Ulevich & Orrange (for Meru Networks - USA)
+1 408-916-1466
ulevich@u-o.com

About St Bernard's School
St Bernard's is a Catholic secondary school in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. It is designated a specialist school for the arts and is a high performing school Rotherham Local Authority: in 2007, 62 percent of pupils left with five or more GCSEs from A* to C including English and Mathematics.

With a new network infrastructure installed in 2008, the school has a networked PC and an interactive whiteboard in each classroom, and the school has a SAN (storage area network). Each member of staff has a laptop. 

School attendance is well above average, and Ofsted inspectors attribute that to the school's support for personal development: 'It's the best place. Lessons are fun,' said one pupil noted in their 2006 report. The school has 670 pupils on the roll, and 100 staff work at the site.

About Networks by Wireless
Founded in January 1998, we have quickly established ourselves as the largest wireless networking company in the UK, specialising in the design, implementation and maintenance of fixed and mobile IP infrastructure, mobility solutions & managed services.

We have access to an outstanding portfolio of products that includes licensed and unlicensed radio, optical wireless products, IP and Mobility solutions, this enables us to make the best use of each technology in order to ensure delivery of converged IP applications, such as Voice, Video, VOIP, Data and CCTV solutions of the highest calibre to our customers.

Our in house expertise and knowledge along with our history of successful delivery and service management leads to enduring, trusted and co-operative partnerships with Customers, Suppliers and Prime partners alike.

At Networks by Wireless we are committed to providing individual solutions to our customer that deliver results and are cost effective. We have the support systems in place to provide a superb after sales service to agreed, often bespoke service levels agreements, together with a 24/7 365 state of the art purpose built Network Operations Centre (NOC) which enables NbW to monitor and, dependant on  SLA, proactively manage deployed networks.

For further details please call: 0845 1231520 or visit our website www.nbw.net

About Meru Networks
Meru Networks develops and markets wireless infrastructure solutions that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise. Its industry-leading innovations deliver pervasive, wireless service fidelity for business-critical applications to major Fortune 500 enterprises, universities, healthcare organizations and local, state and federal government agencies. 

Meru's award-winning Air Traffic Control technology brings the benefits of the cellular world to the wireless LAN environment, and its WLAN System is the only solution on the market that delivers predictable bandwidth and over-the-air quality of service with the reliability, scalability and security necessary to deliver converged voice and data services over a single WLAN infrastructure. 

Founded in 2002, Meru is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. with offices in London, Paris and Stockholm. For more information, visit www.merunetworks.com.

 

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