Bishop David Brown School

Bishop David Brown School is a mixed secondary school on the outskirts of Woking and with 575 students it is rapidly expanding. A refurbishment project was completed in August 2016. The refurbishment included an extension to provide two new classrooms, four new Science laboratories, two ICT room, a Textiles classroom as well as the refurbishment of ten English and Maths classrooms.

At the heart of the refurbishment was the requirement for a new WiFi system to replace an existing solution that was poorly performing and not meeting the teaching requirements for an ever expanding number of pupils whose IT requirements were becoming more intensive with new client devices being added to the network on a monthly basis. In addition to that there was also a requirement for outdoor WiFi to cover the external playing fields and gardens for Sports Days and other potential learning activities.

Several manufacturers were invited to tender including Ruckus, Meru and EnGenius. The criteria were for site wide coverage with fast hand over to ensure seamless roaming, with the ability to handle intensive usage by multiple classrooms. The EnGenius WLAN Solution offered the best price and performance and met all the needs of Bishop David Brown School to carry the teaching needs into the future.

The EnGenius Neutron Solution included the EWS360AP which is a 3 stream ac indoor access point with the ac radio offering 1.3Gbps throughput. For the outdoor requirement the EWS660AP was selected, this unit also offers ac WiFi at 1.3Gbps. Both the indoor and outdoor access points can be managed either by a controller or the free ezMaster VMware management software which is able to control in excess of 10,000 concurrent users and 1000 access points. Ongoing Firmware upgrades are free for life and there are no licensing fees.

The installation by Cavendish Communications was rolled out over the half term holiday with a total of thirty eight access points installed. All the access points were preconfigured off-site, saving valuable time once the
installation was underway. The full EnGenius Neutron Solution was up and running the same day! Bishop David Brown’s ICT Technician John Dickinson commented “The EnGenius WiFi was up and running in
just one day. There were no problems and it has performed exactly as we were told. There has been a good cost saving to the school enabling us to buy more tablets for students”