Meru Networks Case Study: Thor Heyerdahl School
Hallvard Larsen: The school is named after the famous Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl. He was born here in this town, and he's the most famous Norwegian abroad ever. Thor Heyerdahl, he was curious, he was inventive, he was an adventurer and he was full of hope for the future and he was daring. And all these elements or adjectives that we connect with Thor Heyerdahl, we have also tried to apply to our way of learning and our way of making goals, etc.
Ole Skistad: This is a quite large school. It's 24,000 square meters with a lot of open areas across the floors.
Ole Bjom: This building is rather special, and it's quite demanding for a wireless system. It's open areas, lots of open areas, and we have this huge room.
Ole Skistad: The challenge with this kind of environment is it contains a lot of open environments across the floors, and you also get a lot of collisions between access points and frequencies.
Ole Bjom: Due to this modern way of learning, the student will be roaming all the time from classroom to group rooms and to the open areas where they can work individually.
Hallvard Larsen: The students, they tend to organize themselves in ad-hoc groups. They go to the open zones, they go to the canteen, they sit in the stairs, they work in social environments of the school in the open mid-space here, for example. So they like to work in very different surroundings, and therefore the network system must be operating well everywhere in the school.
Ole Bjom: We needed a system where the students could move from classroom to classroom, to smaller rooms, to open areas.
Ole Skistad: Our role in this project was to design it and also to configure it, and this installation is our largest installation on the new technology 11n. The project started before the summer when we designed the wireless net here, and we had the test pilot in the summer. We delivered the wireless net to the school, it was finished in August.
Ole Bjom: The main reason for choosing Meru is because of the virtual cell technology that gave us the possibility to work on only one channel.
Jon Erlend Bordoy: We were quickly up and running with the Meru system. We had full coverage from the first day of school.
Elvind K Lunde: The coverage is so good compared to the amount of APs or access points you have in the building. The complete number of access points are about 20 to 30% less than traditional systems.
Ole Bjom: Meru is a very advanced system, but it's very easy to use and the interface is very good, and we already use the management system without any form training.
Jon Erlend Bordoy: The class management software makes it possible for a teacher to manage the students' computers, so he has the control over how they use it.
Hallvard Larsen: The multiple elements of this system, this network system, is also important because it comprises both picture, videos, speech.
Ole Skistad: In a large environment like this with a lot of users and high demand on capacity, we use Meru to get the best total cost of ownership for our customers.
Student: Having a laptop is a very flexible way of learning because you have access to the information from it at all times, and it's very individual so you can bring your laptop everywhere. You can even take it home, you can bring it out to canteen, you can take it with you everywhere. We have all the information we need.
Jon Erlend Bordoy: When you have a class with 25 to 30 students, a lot of things can go wrong so we need a very dependable wireless network, and we think Meru is up to that task.
Elvind K Lunde: This was my first-time experience with Meru, and DELL got a positive impression about that because they actually followed through the whole case and made the customer satisfied.
Ole Bjom: The installation of the equipment was very quick, and so far we are very, very satisfied.
Hallvard Larsen: I rely on my IT department, and I know that they have sought after the best system available and I think they have found it.
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