388 Access Points Across a 67,845 sqm Campus

SISD is a day and boarding school, which makes it a harder connectivity problem than a school alone. Alongside 2,000 students and 250 staff there are 350 boarding places — so the network has to serve lessons during the day and become a home network at night, with the safeguarding that implies.

Before this project the school had basic WiFi in the administrative building only. By early 2015 the device count was climbing sharply: students arriving with phones, tablets and laptops each, and teaching moving onto interactive whiteboards and e-learning platforms that assume connectivity everywhere.

The campus itself is unusual — 67,845 sqm and the Middle East's first low-energy building in education, consuming a third of the energy of a comparable regional building. Coverage had to reach classrooms, corridors, the atrium, boarding accommodation, a library, a dance studio, a sports hall, an Olympic pool, tennis courts and open playgrounds. Three user groups needed genuinely different access rights on the same infrastructure.

• Day school and boarding on one campus, with different needs by time of day
• Students, staff and guests requiring distinct access rights and restrictions
• Indoor and outdoor coverage across academic, residential and sports facilities
• Heavy concurrent load in lecture halls and classrooms
• Interactive whiteboards, tablets and laptops all sharing the same air

SISD evaluated several WLAN vendors before selecting EZELINK. We deployed 255 indoor and 133 outdoor 802.11ac access points across the campus, managed by a central controller and gateway — one system covering academic buildings, boarding accommodation, sports facilities and open outdoor areas.

The controller is what made a deployment this size practical. Auto-discovery, automatic provisioning, real-time status notification and bulk configuration meant 388 access points could be brought up and managed as a set rather than one at a time. Once live, students and staff roam between buildings without dropping connection.

Access is authenticated and segmented by role. Students, staff and guests each get their own authentication method and their own restrictions, so the same physical network can carry a lesson, an administrative task and a visitor's browsing without any of them touching each other. Load balancing across access points handles the concurrent-user spikes that happen when a full lecture hall connects at once.

• 255 indoor + 133 outdoor 802.11ac access points across the campus
• Central controller with auto-discovery, provisioning and bulk configuration
• Role-based authentication and restrictions for students, staff and guests
• Seamless roaming between buildings and outdoor areas
• AP load balancing for concurrent access in lecture halls and classrooms
• Smart bandwidth management, with dedicated support engineers reachable 24/7

The school now has stable, fast wireless access across the entire campus — classrooms, halls, corridors, boarding accommodation and outdoor areas — with the different levels of restriction it needs for staff, students and guests, and security that exceeds the standard the school set.

For the IT team the change is operational as much as technical. Bandwidth usage, online user counts and activity are visible and manageable from one place, issues are resolved proactively through the NOC rather than reported by teachers, and named support engineers are reachable around the clock.

• 388 access points across 67,845 sqm, indoor and outdoor
• Role-based access for students, staff and guests on one infrastructure
• Seamless roaming between buildings, accommodation and outdoor areas
• Security exceeding the school's required standard
• Proactive NOC monitoring, with issues resolved before they're reported

"Deploying WiFi on such a large scale requires a unique solution that would not only be cost-effective but also deliver best-in-class performance to help us transform the educational experience. EZELINK WiFi solution and support was the ideal solution for SISD to deliver a modern educational experience."

Audrey Hametner · Head of Operations & Finance · SISD Dubai

"The choice was between different WiFi market leaders. We chose EZELINK because it was a perfect blend of performance, dedication, support, price and local presence."

Samir Al-Sulahat · Head of IT · SISD Dubai