The University of the Highlands and Islands is unusual in that it covers an extended geographic region (about half of Scotland, or a sixth of the land area of the UK). It has almost 100 campus locations supporting about 7,500 Higher Education students and 25,000 Further Education students, and is based across a wide range and variety of sites, from large campuses supporting thousands of students, down to single room locations in remote rural areas and on remote islands. These broad-ranging geographic variations leave the university with some unique IT challenges. Available bandwidth can vary hugely between locations—some close to fiber-optic infrastructure and others in remote corners of the region where even broadband speeds are low. Resiliency of those communication links can be another challenge, as diverse routes can be impractical, and sub-sea cables or radio links are more exposed than land-based communication systems. Not least, the university must provide a consistent service across all of its locations, whether they support a handful of students or thousands.

1. CASE STUDY
UNIVERSITY OF THE HIGHLANDS AND
ISLANDS EXTENDS UBIQUITOUS WI-FI
SERVICES ACROSS ITS CHALLENGING
FOOTPRINT
Summary
Company: University of the Highlands
and Islands
Industry: Education
Challenges:
• Deliver ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage
across almost 100 campus locations
spread over a wide geographic area
• Maintain connectivity despite
unreliable and varying wide area links
• Support secure access for corporate
users, guest access, and students’
own devices while differentiating
services across varying site types
Selection Criteria: A team of technical
stakeholders selected Juniper
Networks equipment based on its
ability to support the required client
services and scale to many concurrent
users. The Juniper solution was
sufficiently cost-effective to deploy
more ubiquitous coverage and higher
levels of resilience.
Network Solution:
• WLA82, WLA422, and WLA522
Wireless LAN Access Points
• WLC2800 and WLC200 Wireless LAN
Controllers
• RingMaster management suite
• SmartPass guest management suite
Results:
• Ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage that
surpassed expectations
• BYOD widely adopted, even at the
most remote locations
The University of the Highlands and Islands is unusual in that it covers an
extended geographic region (about half of Scotland, or a sixth of the land
area of the UK). It has almost 100 campus locations supporting about 7,500
Higher Education students and 25,000 Further Education students, and is
based across a wide range and variety of sites, from large campuses supporting
thousands of students, down to single room locations in remote rural areas and
on remote islands.
These broad-ranging geographic variations leave the university with
some unique IT challenges. Available bandwidth can vary hugely between
locations—some close to fiber-optic infrastructure and others in remote
corners of the region where even broadband speeds are low. Resiliency of
those communication links can be another challenge, as diverse routes can
be impractical, and sub-sea cables or radio links are more exposed than
land-based communication systems. Not least, the university must provide a
consistent service across all of its locations, whether they support a handful of
students or thousands.
Challenge
The University of the Highlands and Islands needed to create a standard on-campus
environment that could support students, staff, and visitors wherever they were located
or whichever of the university’s buildings they visited. It needed a ubiquitous Wi-Fi offering
that would provide connectivity for:
• Corporate devices accessing via a hidden encrypted network
• Guest network for contractors, conference delegates, and ad hoc visitors
• Students who bring their own devices (BYOD)
Because many locations are connected by single unprotected links, the solution also
needed to be resilient enough to cope with WAN failures.
The distributed nature of the university meant that its per capita cost was harder to keep
down than for other institutions with large economies of scale at a single location, so a
viable solution was needed that could allow the university to remain within its budget, yet
still create ubiquitous coverage even at the smallest locations.
Added to this, the disparate learning environment means that the university uses a great
deal of video conferencing for distance learning, putting additional strain on the network.
Jem Taylor, head of strategy and development for the university’s Learning and
Information Services, sums up the challenge like this: “Really, we just needed a Wi-Fi
access system that would support everything and do it everywhere!”
• Single management view and
centralized policy implementation
1

2. Selection Criteria
The university created a procurement panel of internal and
external stakeholders, who assessed both the technical and
commercial solutions available. It intentionally withheld the
financial information within the tender responses from the
technical evaluation team to allow members to make their own
recommendations, without the influence of cost.
The technical team was looking for a solution that would support
the three Wi-Fi services required—secure corporate access, a
guest network, and a student bring-your-own-device service. It
also needed to be able to support all users concurrently. It wasn’t
initially clear whether the university could afford ubiquitous indoor
coverage inside every building, but this was highly desirable.
The technical recommendation was to deploy a Juniper Networks
wireless solution, and as it happened, that was one of the most costeffective solutions proposed. It also allowed the university to deliver
the ubiquitous coverage it desired and add resilient backup controllers
to cope with any WAN failures—all within the available budget.
Solution
The solution uses Juniper Networks® WLA82, WLA422, and
WLA522 Wireless LAN Access Points. It also includes Juniper
Networks WLC2800 and WLC200 Wireless LAN Controllers to give
it the levels of resilience it requires across the disparate locations.
A controller is located in each of the larger campuses. This ensures
that connectivity on a campus is maintained even in the event of
a wide area link failure, which is a particular challenge for a region
that relies on single telecom links to remote islands.
The Wi-Fi access infrastructure connects users back to two data
centers, located in Inverness and Perth. Each of these connects to
the UK’s JANET academic backbone network, providing backup
and disaster recovery.
Because bandwidth between some sites is expensive and of
variable throughput, the university has been able to use the
Juniper systems to deliver both high and low bandwidth variations
of each service. At sites with lower bandwidth WAN connections,
bandwidth management features are employed to manage traffic
directly at the wireless interface rather than consuming Wi-Fi
resources with traffic that would need to be discarded later as it
meets a wide area bottleneck. This allows local traffic flows and
critical corporate applications to continue uninterrupted.
Different categories of campus sites have been given different
profiles, and use separate VLANs for different services. They are
all managed from the RingMaster central management suite.
The new network has also facilitated video-based distance
learning across the region, with students often using their own
computers or tablets for video conferencing. And the Juniper
Networks management platform has enabled the university’s IT
team to see the whole estate as a single entity, right down to the
versions of software on users’ devices.
“We’re very happy with the RingMaster management console,”
Taylor says. “It allows us to see an overview of the whole network
and develop and deploy service changes at scheduled times.”
Next Steps and Lessons Learned
There is plenty of headroom left in the network, but the IT team
continues to take advantage of new software features as they
become available, such as having the ability to track student
device types as they access the network. “With hindsight we’d
have made exactly the same decision again,” Taylor says. “And
it’s also been reassuring to have learned that many of our peers
around Scotland’s universities have since made the same choice
as us.”
For More Information
Juniper’s local partner, Qolcom, project managed the network
delivery, which was quite a task across so many locations and
included the installation of new data cabling for ceiling mounted
access points. Qolcom also continues to maintain the network.
To learn more about Juniper Networks wireless LAN portfolio,
please visit www.juniper.net.
Results
Juniper Networks is in the business of network innovation. From
devices to data centers, from consumers to cloud providers,
Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that
transform the experience and economics of networking. The
company serves customers and partners worldwide. Additional
information can be found at www.juniper.net.
The network already supports over 1,500 concurrent users at peak
times and student uptake is constantly growing. “Once a student’s
device is registered, it just works as soon as it nears any of our
buildings,” Taylor says.
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