D-Link Upgrade Improves Performance And Manageability Of New Zealand School's Wireless Network

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- August 3, 2011

-- D-Link Australia & New Zealand, the end-to-end networking solutions provider for business and consumers, today announced that it has upgraded Hereworth School's wireless network to improve its performance and manageability.

Hereworth School is recognised as one of New Zealand's premier private preparatory schools for boys, specialising in primary and intermediate education for both dayboys and boarders. Founded in 1927 by the amalgamation of Heretaunga School (Hastings) and Hurworth School (Wanganui), Hereworth is situated in the Hawke's Bay village of Havelock North.

Hereworth School has a mixed computing environment supporting both PCs and Apple Macintosh systems with a combination of wired and wireless networking technologies. This diversity extends to the School's networking environment with network switches and wireless access points from a variety of different suppliers.

Students use a combination of computers installed in classrooms with wired network connections supplemented by a number of wirelessly connected Apple Macintosh notebooks. Over time, more students have been bringing their own laptops to school which also requires wireless connectivity.

As demand for wireless connectivity has grown, Hereworth School's existing wireless LAN solutions became insufficient. Managing wireless connectivity became difficult and much more administration time was required. Furthermore, providing seamless wireless network access was problematic and the various wireless LAN solutions suffered performance issues due to the high saturation of neighbouring wireless networks. This was causing connectivity issues for both staff and students, particularly when they moved from room to room.

"We had a mixture of wireless capabilities, based on different varieties of solutions, and as a result we had connectivity issues trying to roam across the different wireless access points," said Sean Feltoe, IT Manager for Hereworth School. "Each of the access points was managed separately and manually and that ultimately was what we needed to improve."

For the core of the new solution, D-Link recommended a DWS-3024L Gigabit Managed Unified Wired/Wireless Switch which is designed to deliver high-performance and secure, manageable and scalable unified wired/wireless LAN switching. With this solution, Hereworth School consolidated the security, manages the bandwidth and maintains the intelligence of its entire wired and wireless network.

The new Gigabit wireless switch also provided an easy way of upgrading to next-generation 802.11n wireless LAN technology. By using D-Link's DWL-8600AP Unified Wireless 802.11n Dual-Band Access Points, wireless throughput and capacity is increased and the access points can be centrally managed.

Hereworth's existing switches are now connected to the new D-Link DWS-3024 switch, effectively unifying the entire network around a centralised management point, and providing additional capacity to expand the network in the future.

The new solution has been greatly simplified which reduces time for managing and administering Hereworth School's network. IT staff can now easily and centrally add new devices to the network as students frequently bring new laptops into school.

The central management capabilities of the new solution also improve the level of security. Instead of monitoring the security level of each access point, the switch automatically enforces security settings to prevent unsecure wireless networks.

Students and teachers benefit from improved wireless performance and the ability to move throughout the school without experiencing wireless signal drop outs.

Additionally, the D-Link DWL-8600AP Dual-Band Access Points suffer less interference than the previous solution as the majority of the equipment within the school supports the 5GHz frequency which is less traffic congested and avoids interference from surrounding areas.

"Our mobile users can now get seamless roaming between access points for clear, uninterrupted data and voice communication throughout the entire network infrastructure," said Feltoe. "The coverage and performance of the wireless network has also been significantly increased. At the same time, the deployment was extremely quick and simple so there was very little downtime or interruption to the school."

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About D-Link

D-Link is the global leader in connectivity for small, medium and large enterprise business networking. The company is an award-winning designer, developer and manufacturer of networking, broadband, digital electronics, voice, data and video communications solutions for the digital home, Small Office/Home Office (SOHO), Small to Medium Business (SMB), and Workgroup to Enterprise environments. With millions of networking and connectivity products manufactured and shipped, D-Link is a dominant market participant and price/performance leader in the networking and communications market.

D-Link Australia and New Zealand headquarters are located at Building A, Level 3, 11 Talavera Road, North Ryde, NSW, 2113, Sydney Australia. Phone (02) 8899 1800; Fax (02) 8899 1868; Internet www.dlink.com.au / www.dlink.co.nz; email marketing@dlink.com.au.