The university's new Wi-Fi network is built around a centralized architecture with 180 Cisco Aironet 1130 AG Series wireless access points installed across the university's campus. It has been designed to provide faculty, student and guests with access to resources ranging from the university's education portal, educational and methodological materials, the library server, the encyclopedia of Cyril and Methodius, and Internet access.

"Equipping our facilities with appropriate technology that provides our students and lecturers with the best possible access to educational resources whilst driving collaboration between their peers is an important factor as we strive to deliver an outstanding quality of education at Kant," said Sergey Matveyev, vice chancellor of Kant University. "Today, students can be seen accessing the Internet using their laptops from any building across the campus, and lecturers use the network resources when delivering their lectures in any one of our lecture halls. Cisco's solution together with WesCom has established the university as an innovator in education and technology, able to enhance citizens' lives in the westernmost region of the Russian Federation."

Rather than an implementation of a single access point covering a relatively small area, the Kaliningrad University required a highly secure, reliable Wi-Fi network with ubiquitous coverage of the entire campus, consisting of more than a dozen buildings.

"Education is a strategic area of focus for Cisco, not just as a technology innovator, but as an innovator of education programs around the world," said Robert Agee, vice president for Cisco Russia. "We have developed a large range of innovative solutions for educational institutions, using technology to improve communication among students and teachers. In addition, Cisco has created many academic programs for students and certified ICT professionals, such as the Cisco Networking Academy®, which has thousands of locations in 168 countries around the world dedicated to building technology talent locally, which in turn helps to ensure a self-sustaining economy."

The project was implemented by WesCom, a Kaliningrad company and a Cisco Select Partner that renders system and network integration services.

The network operation is supported by features of the Cisco Unified Wireless solution that assist operations by adjusting the capacity usage of each access point automatically to help ensure a more reliable coverage of the serviced territory. In addition, a backup of power supply units and network connections makes the network more robust and resilient.

The Cisco wireless solution is an integrated architecture that provides advanced security solutions embedded in the Cisco Unified Wireless Network. The solution detects, blocks and notifies managers about unauthorized connection attempts. This helps to ensure network and data integrity, providing a high level of information security, which is one of the most important requirements of network access today.

By Robert Hoskins

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