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11/11/2008

Carnegie Mellon University Validates Production 802.11n Network

Wireless Andrew 2.0 Achieves Production Status with Xirrus® 802.11n Wi-Fi Arrays.

Thousand Oaks, CA (Vocus/PRWEB) November 11, 2008 -- Xirrus, Inc., the Wi-Fi "Power-Play" that delivers the most coverage, bandwidth, and throughput in the industry, announces the move from beta to production status of the Xirrus 802.11abg+n Wi-Fi Arrays at Carnegie Mellon University, with more than 14,000 students, faculty, and staff able to access the new Xirrus Wi-Fi network.

"Over 2,800 Xirrus 802.11abg+n integrated access points are now operational using only 350 Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays," said Dan McCarriar, Director of Network and Production Services at Carnegie Mellon University. "We chose Xirrus to be deployed in the most demanding areas of our campus, including the residence halls and buildings housing a variety of engineering and computer science programs, where performance needs continually spike and the types of applications and devices vary greatly."

Carnegie Mellon University's Wireless Andrew network was one of the first campus-wide wireless networks in the world and has been in operation since 1994. Today, Wireless Andrew 2.0 provides service to over 14,000 students, faculty, and staff across the university's main campus.

"Xirrus 802.11abg+n Wi-Fi Arrays have allowed us to take the next leap in performance that will carry us forward for the next 5 years," added McCarriar. "It's interesting to note that nearly 100% of this year's incoming freshmen who brought laptops had 802.11abg+n-capable wireless cards. We fully expect to see the total student population with 802.11n-capable notebooks climb to 50% next year. As the use of Xirrus 802.11n grows, we expect a reduction in use of wired network ports by end users, and even can foresee purchasing fewer 10/100 wired Ethernet switch ports during our next upgrade."

"Servicing 14,000 students would break traditional controller-based Wi-Fi architectures. The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array is unique compared to other solutions in that we place the power and intelligence closer to the user by integrating 4, 8, 12, 16, or 24 802.11abg+n radios in to a single device, coupled to a high-gain directional antenna system along with an onboard multi-gigabit switch, Wi-Fi controller, firewall, dedicated Wi-Fi threat sensor, and an embedded spectrum analyzer," said Dirk Gates, Co-founder and CEO at Xirrus. "Unlike other Wi-Fi vendors, we designed our architecture to replace the wired network - delivering far better coverage, bandwidth, and throughput than anything else available on the market today."

Click here for more information on the Carnegie Mellon University deployment.


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