When a Campus Becomes a Small City Overnight

As our blog series progresses, comparing a college campus to a small city seems sort of obvious. But this can become even more apparent when big sporting or entertainment events comes to campus. In large universities, the campus population can easily double, sometimes swelling to more than 100,000—making the school campus greater than the size of the biggest cities in Wyoming, West Virginia or Vermont.

Welcoming sports and entertainment fans

We all know that traditional universities usually support a number of sporting and entertainment venues—from football, soccer, baseball and track stadiums to basketball, volleyball and gymnastic facilities, a fieldhouse, a natatorium, tennis courts, a golf course, as well as amphitheaters, Greek theatres, band halls and concert arenas. And, as in a mini-metropolis, these locations become the nerve centers of city life—where tens of thousands of residents, families and fans come together to share in recreation and excitement.

To heighten this experience, venues operate scoreboards, digital signage and live-action monitors that are all dependent on the wireless network. Add to that digital tickets, cashless payment systems and the thousands of guests using apps to follow the action, and you’ve got a high-density challenge that could negatively impact the fan experience should anything go wrong. It’s here that Wi-Fi® shows itself as the lifeblood of these venues.

Anticipating network overload

Because of this concentrated influx of alumni, fans and guests, the network can easily be strained if nothing is done. Some colleges resort to provisional remedies during game days or graduations, such as carrier offloading, pop-up Wi-Fi, and bandwidth throttling. But these adjustments only provide temporary relief; they don’t solve the core challenges that can linger and taint the campus experience. Plus, what happens if two smaller events occurring on the same weekend draw larger-than-expected crowds?

As a proven leader in networking, RUCKUS® offers reliable solutions that are ideal for high-density, high-capacity environments. For example, our access points (APs) are stuffed with patented innovations like BeamFlex+® adaptive antenna technology, ChannelFly® active channel management technology, and RUCKUS Airtime Decongestion to manage and optimize Wi-Fi traffic in real time. This ingenious applied science is the reason we outperform the competition in the latest stress test, and it’s why colleges like Butler University and venues like Chicago’s United Center both selected RUCKUS Networks for their recent network refresh.

But our goal to deliver a robust and scalable network doesn’t stop at our APs. Our high-performance ICX® switches stand out amongst the competition by being highly efficient using PoE+ technology, more fault tolerant with Multi-Chassis Trunking (MCT), and the best stackable options of up to 12 units and as far as 10 kilometers apart. It’s also why colleges like Penn State University and Harper Adams University selected RUCKUS switches for their small city campuses.

Beyond basic Wi-Fi solutions

To be able to offer a complete networking system, RUCKUS also offers a cloud native network assurance and intelligence platform that thrives in complex, high-density surroundings. Built from the ground up using our own proprietary AI, RUCKUS One® not only monitors and optimizes your network, it also identifies the root causes of connectivity issues and recommends fixes.

For a campus-city, this is like having several full-time IT experts working on your network without sleep or breaks. Best of all, it can easily be managed from a single, unified dashboard—even from off-campus. It’s what helped Del Mar College improve network performance over their 45-building campus.

Want to learn more on RUCKUS designs networks for higher education?

Download solution guide

Read the other blogs in this series: 

• Campus Libraries Have the Same Needs as Those of a Small City 
• Like City Hall in Small Cities, Administration Is Critical to Your Campus-City