Aruba Wi-Fi 6E Joins 1,400 Colleges and Universities Worldwide to Create a Smart Campus for the Future

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, recently announced that more and more educational institutions, including K-12 schools and higher education institutions, are upgrading their network infrastructure with Aruba Wi-Fi 6E to build a new generation of digital classrooms and campuses. With greater capacity, more powerful performance, and greater support for client and IoT device density, Aruba Wi-Fi 6E, combined with the innovative technology of Aruba access points (APs), helps educational institutions provide an extraordinary campus and classroom experience for their teachers, students, staff and guests.

Since the launch of the Aruba Wi-Fi 6E solution in May 2021, more than 1,400 educational institutions around the world, including 250 educational campuses such as Doane University, Texas A&M University, Meramec Valley R-III School District, and Festus R-VI School District, have chosen to migrate to Aruba Wi-Fi 6E access points as the basis for teaching, learning, and building smart campuses. According to reports from industry analysis agencies such as the 650 Group, this large number of customers shows that Aruba has taken a leading position in the market in providing Wi-Fi 6E infrastructure.

“Aruba has achieved early leadership in the rapidly growing and competitive enterprise-class Wi-Fi 6E access point market, shipping more than 35% of all enterprise-class Wi-Fi 6E access points since the market’s inception,” said Chris DePuy, founder and technology analyst at The 650 Group.

For educational institutions, the main reasons for choosing to apply Aruba Wi-Fi 6E include: more and more clients and IoT devices are connected to the network, requiring strong network support, as well as support for collaboration and innovation; increasing bandwidth to support new features such as high-definition video, AR/VR and remote learning, providing future protection for their network investment; meeting the growing expectations of students, teachers and staff for ubiquitous, always-online strong network connections. In addition, K-12 school districts and university campuses are providing students with comprehensive IoT devices that integrate security, lighting, video surveillance and HVAC solutions, which have become part of building automation and the foundation of smart facilities. This move will help educational institutions support sustainable development initiatives by saving resources such as electricity and heating and cooling in the process of building smart facilities.

Founded in 1872, Doane University is the oldest private university in Nebraska, USA, and was selected as the "Top Liberal Arts College in the Country" by U.S. News & World Report magazine. The university's main campus is located in Crete and consists of 21 buildings, including 6 dormitory buildings, which can accommodate 800 students. Doane University also has two satellite campuses in Lincoln and Omaha. Currently, the school's technology department is committed to providing students with a modern 21st century learning experience and building a network that meets the future development of the university.

“As we move toward digital transformation, we are seeing an exponential growth in the number of BYOD devices and IoT devices on campus,” said Ryan Dorshorst, Director of Technology Operations at Doane University. “We need mission-critical applications that support expanding research and collaboration, as well as high-bandwidth applications such as streaming video, video communications and AR/VR for learning and entertainment. Aruba Wi-Fi 6E access points not only meet our current needs, but also have the ability to scale to accommodate the future needs of our campus, staff and students.”

Texas A&M University has the largest student body in the United States, serving nearly 73,000 students and employing more than 11,000 faculty and staff. The main campus is located in College Station, Texas, covering more than 5,500 acres. Texas A&M University has 17 colleges and 21 research institutes, offering more than 130 degree programs. The university recently started a new network plan to build the Next Generation Aggie Network (NGAN) and plans to move the entire campus network to Aruba Wi-Fi 6E within three years.

“Our network supports approximately 120,000 devices every day. When we began designing our NGAN, we needed a scalable network that could scale more quickly and easily as our needs changed,” said Ed Pierson, Chief Information Officer, Texas A&M University. “We plan to use the Open Locate indoor location service native to the Aruba Wi-Fi 6E network for public safety, while implementing Passpoint as a replacement for the distributed antenna system (DAS). Our focus is on building a smart campus of the future, so we need a secure, reliable, high-performance network environment. We believe that choosing to deploy Aruba Wi-Fi 6E is a wise choice, and with our strong partnership with Aruba and the deployment of other Aruba solutions, we will be able to achieve our goals.”

Located in southeast Missouri, Meramec Valley R-III School District consists of nine K-12 schools serving 3,000 students and 450 teachers and staff. Meramec Valley R-III firmly believes that educational technology should enhance and expand the learning environment, engage students, and help them create, communicate, collaborate, and think critically, and has directed its technology department to integrate technology across the district’s schools.

“Aruba Wi-Fi 6E has improved our network performance by an average of 10 times, which means students and teachers can spend their valuable class time engaging in classroom activities rather than wasting time loading videos and other teaching materials,” said Debby Haley, Meramec Valley Technology Director. “Aruba Wi-Fi 6E is a huge performance improvement over our older technology, so we will continue to require Aruba Wi-Fi 6E models in future purchases to continue to provide a high-performance network environment for teachers and students in the school district.”

Festus R-VI School District is located south of St. Louis, Missouri. The district has four schools with a total enrollment of 3,300 students. The district's goal is to ensure the quality of teaching, learning, and assessment through the effective use of technology. To achieve this goal, the district is implementing a comprehensive technology plan, a key part of which is to ensure that staff and students have access to the latest technology to prepare them for future success.

“At Festus School District, one of our goals is to ensure that students graduate prepared for future success, whether they choose to go on to college, pursue career training, or enter the workforce directly,” said Josh Bauman, director of technology at Festus R-VI School District. “One of the ways we can prepare them for this future is by embracing cutting-edge technology early so our students are comfortable and able to use it beyond K-12. With the recent installation of Aruba 630 Series Wi-Fi 6E access points, we now have a future-proof infrastructure to support our students’ next stage of success.”