At the beginning of November 2015 our friends and partners at 9elements in Bochum decided to opt for a new WiFi solution.
In Bochum’s inner city the old Ubiquiti based solution didn’t work well anymore.
Lots of other WiFis in the neighbourhood, no band steering (moving clients to the 5GHz-Band), Beam Forming (adapting antennas to connected clients) and RF monitoring (detecting and bypassing malfunctions) made it hard to work with the existing WiFi.
Bearing those circumstances in mind, we came up with a new WLAN solution based on Ruckus R710 access points. The R710s enable 802.11ac based on the new “Wave 2” version of the standard and are thus well equipped for coming device generations.
Through BeamFlex technology we also ensured that mobile devices like laptops and smartphones always get the best available connection quality. Due to different antenna location in smartphones and laptops (antenna in the laptop lid) dual polarised antennas in access points are absolutely necessary to achieve high speeds and reduce malfunctions. The Ruckus R710s are also set for IoT applications. They come with a USB port for plugging in Bluetooth low energy sticks and therefore enables indoor positioning for the client. Since 9elements is working with pioneering technologies, the iBeacon technology was another reason to go for these access points.
The migration, which was performed during working hours, didn’t cause any difficulties. After the physical installation, the pre-configured access points were activated one after another. In this way the clients could switch to the new WLAN network during operations and with only a few seconds of interruption.
After getting the first really positive feedback we hope that 9elements will have just as much fun with their new wireless freedom in the future!