Chico Unified School District

Preparing the Next Generation for Dynamic Learning

Nobody wants to be behind the curve especially when it comes to education. The future generation relies on being provided with the best education possible. Many school districts are weaving more digital learning into their curriculums to help keep up with the Common Core Standards. With more powerful mobile devices and an overflow of traffic hitting the networks, school districts are finding that their legacy infrastructure is failing. Upgrades to the network are necessary to the entire teaching and learning domain. RUCKUS® provided industrial strength mobility solutions to support a 21st century digital learning platform.

Challenge

Located in California’s lush Sacramento Valley, the Chico Unified School District covers 322 square miles, with 21 schools serving over 12K students. Like so many school districts, Chico USD was facing a rapid increase of mobile devices against an aging mixed environment network infrastructure. Providing for over 2,500 students, including 500 iPads and 2,000 Chromebooks, with the intention of adding 2,000 more Chromebooks for the school year, Chico needed a reliable infrastructure.

Their existing network only allowed for 40 clients per access point before losing all useful performance. With more media-rich applications being used in and out of the classroom, Chico needed to upgrade and expand its three year old infrastructure.

Requirements
  • Ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage and strong signal strength to deliver high data rates to many concurrent clients
  • Higher performance, higher capacity district-wide indoor/outdoor Wi-Fi infrastructure at low cost of ownership
  • Reliable Wi-Fi connectivity to meet mission critical testing and digital curriculum needs
  • Simple and easy to use command-and-control application from a single platform
Solutions
  • Increased the number of concurrent clients supported per AP while improving signal strength and wireless reliability
  • Deployed over 400 RUCKUS access points creating a huge increase in efficiency and increasing WLAN capacity
  • Deployed 2 redundant ZoneDirector 5000 controllers for a single, easy-to-use platform
  • Implemented 120 ICX switches offering the highest stacking density and performance
  • Future-proofed infrastructure with an integrated, open, scalable, high-performing network
To learn more about this project:

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