In the 21st Century, information literacy is critical for a student's success later in life. Access to and experience with a wide range of IT applications is essential to ensuring this literacy.

The benefits of a pervasive Wi-Fi deployment in primary and secondary education include:

• Infrastructure Flexibility: A school's learning technology needs are as diverse as class sizes. A WLAN can be quickly rolled out virtually anywhere to meet those needs.
• Speed: Students can access a WLAN-enabled learning environment in a matter of seconds, without special connections or a tangle of cables.
• Resource Mobility: A WLAN allows technology learning tools such as laptops to be moved to wherever students are, rather than vice-versa.

Unique Challenges of Education

Deploying WLAN in the classroom can bring enormous benefits, but there are some distinct technological challenges to this environment:

• Small school IT departments are called upon to support large numbers of users, so the WLAN solution cannot require time-intensive configuration and administration.
• Wireless coverage issues are created by schools' sprawling layouts and the need to provide connectivity to multiple users in the confined area of a classroom.
• Security compliance regulations require separation of student and faculty networks.
• Uncertain school budget processes require that the deployed WLAN ensure costs are kept low, leverage existing infrastructure, and offer advantages in terms of scale and price.

Extricom: WLAN Architecture Built for Primary/Secondary Education

CORE REQUIREMENTS			EXTRICOM UNIQUE VALUE
Administrative Simplicity: Overstretched IT Administrators operate in a tactical mode to resolve day-to-day operational issues, so their WLAN must feature easy deployment and administration.			Ease of Deployment and Administration: The Extricom WLAN solution can be put into production within a matter of days by personnel with basic skills, and administration is simple and centralized.
Comprehensive Communications: High standards of reliability are mandatory, to avoid impacting classroom productivity.			Guaranteed Service: Only the Extricom WLAN technology can deliver guaranteed levels of connectivity to all users everywhere.
Cost-Effectiveness: School budgets demand a WLAN infrastructure capable of handling change transparently.			The Lowest Cost of Ownership: Extricom's solution is deployed and maintained with plug-and-play simplicity. The result is the lowest TCO in the industry.
User Security: Privacy of student information, even testing integrity, is of paramount importance.			A Secure Wi-Fi Environment: Extricom embeds the strongest security available, without sacrificing mobility or performance.
High-Density Environment: In the typical school, large numbers of users need concurrent access to the WLAN, so high capacity without coverage or mobility trade-offs is critical.			Easily Scalable Infrastructure: The Extricom Channel Blanket maximizes capacity and coverage with APs deployed in any density and the highest bandwidth in the industry.

The Future of Wi-Fi

Primary/Secondary educational institutions have a clear vision of the importance of Wi-Fi to their educational mission. The question is: how confident are school IT staff that today's technologies can meet the demands of their environment?

Ask us how schools have succeeded with Extricom. Extricom's Wireless LAN is specifically designed to answer the challenges posed by pervasive Wi-Fi, providing the high-performance, resilient, and future-proof infrastructure required by the education environment.