Drew Charter School of Atlanta, Ga., boasts one of the highest rates of academic improvement in both the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia and competes with some of the best public and private schools in the state. The school's award-winning 105,000 square-foot building employs nearly 40 teachers and educates over 850 students each year.
Drew recently undertook the challenge of replacing its campus-wide wired network with a wireless architecture. “We were looking for the same kind of connectivity wirelessly as we have with our wired infrastructure," said technology manager Paul Steen. After evaluating five or six vendors, Drew chose Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays.
According to Steen, the wireless installation was up and running within one day, and is relatively easy to manage and configure. He also noted the benefits of being able to quickly adjust the wireless array. "Since we are the first charter schools in Atlanta, we have a lot of people coming onsite to tour the campus - being able to easily configure the Array to offer guest access to the Internet while securing the school's confidential information is now a reality."Currently the school has nearly 400 notebooks and netbooks connected to the Xirrus Arrays. "The density and coverage is fantastic – words cannot describe it,”concluded Steen.
