The University of Macau sought to replace its legacy Wi-Fi network comprised of autonomous access points in favor of a centrally managed wireless LAN with automatic load balancing, a role-based firewall for security, and fault-tolerant wireless controllers. Aruba was awarded the project based on its management system, integrated firewall, Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) technology, and N+1 controller redundancy.

"The university's legacy Fat AP wireless network was difficult to manage, offered limited security, and had an inflexible VLAN arrangement -- our new Aruba network addressed all of these issues," said Jason Ho, University of Macau's Director of ICTO. "The new centralized architecture makes short work of managing, troubleshooting, and updating the entire network. Network access had been a constant challenge, but our new role-based firewall provides a simple, flexible means of addressing the needs of our employees, students, and guests. Finally, the new network offers very flexible network segmentation: VLAN pooling can automatically assign a VLAN to a WLAN client, and the VLAN-related settings are based on the value returned by RADIUS server. Taken together these features address the shortcomings of our previous network and pave the way for a wide range of future applications."

ARM technology simplifies network set-up, optimizes radio channels to overcome local sources of interference, and ensures reliable performance in densely-packed lecture halls. The result is follow-me connectivity that ensures the reliable delivery of high-speed data, toll-quality voice, and streaming video applications. ARM reliably supports Intel Centrino, Apple Macintosh, and the broad array of wireless PC clients commonly used by students, faculty, and staff.

The University of Macau relies on its wireless LAN as business-critical infrastructure, and the legacy network suffered from disruptive outages if a device failed. The new Aruba network features N+1 wireless controller redundancy that automatically switches to a back-up controller in the event of a failure.

"Universities include a diverse range of constituencies -- faculty, staff, students, visitors -- and Aruba's highly flexible architecture is very well suited to addressing such a wide range of users," said Denny Lo, Aruba's Territory Manager. "Our solutions extend far beyond adaptive wireless LANs and integrate multi-vendor network management, intrusion detection and prevention, endpoint compliance, access control, fixed mobile convergence, and a host of other technologies into a unified mobility solution. We leveraged this wide range of capabilities to address diverse needs of University of Macau, and look forward to providing similar solutions to other universities in the region."