Like City Hall in Small Cities, Administration Is Critical to Your Campus-City

Think about it: A college campus is basically run like a small city—complete with residential areas (dorms), business districts (classrooms and lecture halls) and commercial districts (student unions and retail). Here, the entire operation is controlled by the business and administration offices that resemble City Hall.

In these buildings, the governance of the campus takes place—everything from student registration and financial aid to payroll and campus security. It’s here that decisions are made on how to improve campus facilities, maintain student satisfaction and look ahead at how to best attract and retain new students.

Since intranets, business operations and accounting systems, procurement, maintenance work-order systems, and even class registration are now all electronic, campus wired and wireless networks are a crucial part of this mini-metropolis. And, as facilities begin to rely more heavily on IoT devices to effectively and efficiently manage buildings, investing in intelligent network segmentation makes even more sense.

In this small city, the administrative backbone is also charged with protecting the sensitive academic records, research data, and personal information of community members at all costs. Security is a high priority as these offices rely on wireless networks for day-to-day operations, including email, file sharing and access to administrative software. The campus-wide network must be able to distinguish between trusted users and potential threats while maintaining the open, collaborative environment that defines higher education. Any network failure here can bring the city’s essential services to a stop.

For your campus-city networking, RUCKUS® makes the most sense. Only RUCKUS solutions include proprietary patents—such as our BeamFlex+® adaptive antenna technology, our ChannelFly® real-time channel management algorithm, and Dynamic Pre-Shared Keys (DPSK™) onboarding encryption—that help create a network that reduces interference and deliver seamless connectivity. This explains why institutions like Del Mar College and Butler University turned to RUCKUS for their campus network refresh.

But RUCKUS network solutions are more than just premier access points (as demonstrated in the latest stress test). Our scalable, high-performance ICX® switches also stand out amongst the competition by being highly efficient through PoE+ technology, being more fault tolerant using Multi-Chassis Trunking (MCT), and providing the best stackability in the business—up to 12 units and as far as 10 kilometers apart. These are a just few of the reasons Penn State University and Harper Adams University selected RUCKUS switches for their small city campuses.

We also offer sophisticated controllers like RUCKUS One®—our AI-driven network assurance and business intelligence platform—that permit lean IT staffs to simplify their network operations and management. Here administrators can gain a unified look at their whole network, across their entire campus, through a single, easy-to-use, intuitive dashboard.

Ask our HiED experts for a personal demonstration and see for yourself how RUCKUS Networks delivers high-performing, sustainable and economical solutions for higher education.

Learn more about how RUCKUS helps design better networks for colleges and universities.

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Read the other blogs in this series: 

• Campus Libraries Have the Same Needs as Those of a Small City 

• When a Campus Becomes a Small City Overnight