West Hatch High School

West Hatch High School is a large secondary school situated in Chigwell, Essex. The school is renowned for its ICT provision and identified the need to replace its legacy HP ProCurve wireless network to ensure a fast, reliable, campus wide wireless network that could keep pace with the growing demand of wireless clients. Aware of our ‘Top Dog’ partner status with Ruckus Wireless and as an existing customer of CBC Computers, West Hatch made contact with us to be involved in the tendering process for the provision and installation of the replacement wireless network.

With the school having an existing Hyper-V environment deployed and some key advantages of the new Ruckus virtualized controller, the school decided to proceed with the virtualised controller proposal delivered by CBC and also opted for our professional services to carry out the onsite setup and initial configuration of the Virtual SmartZone controller and CAT6 cabling works to relocate and install additional runs where applicable to suit the heat maps provided.

The work was carried out in two stages, firstly we deployed an engineer to carry out the controller build and setup who worked closely with the schools Network Manager throughout the day to effectively replicate the legacy system to the new Ruckus controller. The second stage of the onsite works took place during the summer break where two engineers attended site for two days to complete the removal of the redundant HP system, CAT6 cabling works, mounting of the new Ruckus hardware throughout the site and associated testing.

Following the deployment of the Ruckus solution, all wireless users throughout the school instantly noticed and benefited from a much faster wireless solution with quicker log on times, faster web browsing and data transfer speeds. This positively influenced the learning of students as they could work much quicker than before and increased staff morale as they had greater confidence in delivering lessons using wireless clients given the much improved reliability.

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