Aerohive Networks says that it has deployed a campus-wide Wi-Fi network for the UK based Oxford Brookes University. The WLAN, implemented with support from LAN3, is spread over five campuses and 10 halls of residence, providing wireless connectivity for 18,000 students and 2,500 staff. It is also part of the JANET eduroam initiative, supporting network access for visitors, staff and students at participating HE institution.

The company said that the existing Cisco WLAN already provided hotspot wireless coverage in libraries and large teaching rooms, but there was little intelligence in the network and no central management capability.

The Aerohive solution has the capacity to support 10,000 devices, concurrently, on the network. A HiveManager Virtual Appliance provides a central view of all network activity across the entire estate.

Oxford Brookes' WLAN is now also part of the JANET Roaming Service (eduroam), a secure, world-wide roaming access service. Using 802.1x authentication, visitors, staff and students can securely access the wireless network of any HE institution that subscribes to eduroam, using their own log-in details.

In 2012, the university intends to provide blanket wireless coverage, and later incorporate voice over Wi-Fi services and manage a higher proportion of latency-sensitive video and other application traffic.

"In five years time, it's possible that all our network access will be wireless," said Robin Breathe, Chief Technology Officer at Oxford Brookes University.. "To sustain the tens of thousands of concurrent devices such a system would have to support in an environment like ours, Aerohive's architecture is the only way we could foresee achieving this."