University of Massachusetts Amherst Gives 12,000 Residential Students Wireless Access with Aruba MOVE Architecture08:00 EDT Tuesday, October 18, 2011 SUNNYVALE, Calif. (Business Wire) -- Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARUN) today announced that the University of Massachusetts Amherst has provided its 12,000+ resident students with wireless access, completely replacing the existing cabled network. A multimedia-grade Wi-Fi network, based on the Aruba Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture, was selected to handle the dense number of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets and the resulting increase in high bandwidth video and audio traffic over the air. “Our students no longer want to be tethered to a desktop, but rather expect us to provide a high performance network that will support mobile devices that make increasing use of video and audio enhanced applications.” said John Dubach, UMass Amherst CIO. “With a full Aruba 802.11n network at 5Ghz, and the prevalence of 802.11n-enabled clients, we can deliver this service as well, or even better than, we could with the wired network we replaced,” said Dan Blanchard, Senior Advisor to the CIO. “Wireless is essential to the mobile collaborative learning environment of today.” UMass Amherst is the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts system, sitting on nearly 1,450 acres in the scenic Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, 90 miles from Boston and 175 miles from New York City. The campus provides a rich cultural environment in a rural setting close to major urban centers. With more than 27,000 total undergraduate and graduate students and more than 1,100 full-time instructional faculty, providing reliable, secure access to information from anywhere on campus is critical. Like many universities and other facilities, UMass Amherst began by deploying wireless hotspots in common areas where students congregate for study and leisure. They then extended the wireless access to classrooms, libraries and administrative buildings, before deciding to replace the wired access made available in residence halls with 802.11n wireless solutions from Aruba. UMass Amherst residents, like students everywhere, not only expect network services similar to those they have at home, but they also need secure access to university services. It's not uncommon for applications like Netflix and Pandora to be competing for airtime with mission-critical academic traffic. UMass Amherst led with a pilot program in a single residence hall housing 139 students, in which it installed wireless-only network access for the residents. After conducting multiple surveys during the pilot, it was clear that the students were very satisfied and eager to see a mobile network service provided. Their preference for wireless was clear and the Aruba multimedia-grade solution was up to the task. Using Aruba Airwave management software, the IT department at UMass Amherst identified "rogue" access points and developed an "air space" policy for the residence halls, asking students not to deploy their own access points and offering them a managed wireless service, administered by the university IT department. They physically un-plugged the more than 12,000 Ethernet "ports to the pillow," that they had installed for access in a more desktop-centric era, and deployed more than 2,000 Aruba 802.11n AP-125 access points to provide students with network access. The deployment was completed over two summer phases of two months each. Students use the new wireless network for a variety of applications including the usual email and research. The trend is moving toward more social-media focused unified communications and even IPTV, delivered from video subscription services outside the university. The results have been outstanding. The number of registered network devices has increased, trouble tickets have been proportionally reduced and the university IT department avoided the cost of upgrading all of the CAT-3 cable that had been deployed earlier to provide wired access to all 12,000+ residents. While UMass Amherst will continue to provide wired access to researchers, labs, high-performance computing environments and other areas that require sustained multi-gigabit connections, it will cover the remaining 80 percent of the campus with wireless as the primary access type. "UMass Amherst is ahead of many in making the transition to Wi-Fi as the primary means of network access," said Manish Rai, director of industry solutions marketing for Aruba. "As students bring more mobile devices with them and access more multimedia content over the air, the wired network and port-per-pillow mentality just won't suffice. Aruba's multimedia-grade Wi-Fi is designed to maximize capacity and reliability in these challenging dense deployments so that universities can make this transition." About Aruba Networks, Inc. Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise. The company's Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture unifies wired and wireless network infrastructures into one seamless access solution for corporate headquarters, mobile business professionals, remote workers and guests. This unified approach to access networks dramatically improves productivity and lowers capital and operational costs. Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000® Index, Aruba is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions. To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook. © 2011 Aruba Networks, Inc. Aruba Networks' trademarks include the design mark for AirWave, Aruba Networks®, Aruba Wireless Networks®, the registered Aruba the Mobile Edge Company logo, the registered AirWave logo, Aruba Mobility Management System®, Mobile Edge Architecture®, People Move. Networks Must Follow®, RFProtect®, Green Island®. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Aruba NetworksWilson Craig, +1-408-516-6182Director, Corporate Communicationswcraig@arubanetworks.com