Wireless Network Overhaul

During the Easter holidays we had the pleasure of finally upgrading and replacing the wireless network at Badminton.  At 6 years old the current network was ok but it did not have any cloud management and was starting to show its age in terms of reliability and missing modern features.  

Alongside the network project we designed and purchased 165 new Aruba Access points.  These new access points are cloud managed via Aruba Central, the same system as our new switches providing a unified management tool.  

The new access points are comprised of 165x Aruba 515, 535 and 565 aps

Phase 1: Planning and Preparation

To properly prepare we commissioned a predictive site survey of the School.  A networking specialist used floor plans of the buildings and our current locations to predict the performance and coverage of the new network and identify any holes or coverage issues.  Every building and every floor was mapped and then analysed for coverage, channel overlap, noise, secondary signal strength and more.  The final report was 690 pages long!

With this report we then finalised the exact location of every access point, with the sample to the right you can see that the staff room and Stuart Dalley's office are both below the cutoff.  As a result we have added a new AP in the staff room and moved some around slightly to help with SD and the other offices there.

We also looked in detail at external coverage and area's that could be served better.  Places such as the Science car park, outside the library, sixth form back lawns, outside art, the rough patch, astro turf etc...  We added 7 new external access points to address these area's specifically.

Phase 2: Delivery and Setup

We took delivery of the Access points and begun auditing and allocating.  Every single AP had to be labeled and specifically allocated its new location.  We also instructed data installers to add approx 20 new data points where needed for new APs.

Using Aruba Central we imported floor plans of every building and mapped out all the new AP Locations ready for installation.  We worked with an external company to get quotes for swapping and installing all the new devices.

Phase 3: Testing

Whilst we waited for the Easter break we slowly swapped out most of the Science block with new AP's.  This allowed us to test and verify the new system was working correctly before rolling out further.  This was a good thing as we identified many issues with the new setup and some older devices and reliability problems that needed to be fixed before we could swap the whole School over.

Phase 4: Implementation

Over 5 days during Easter the external contractors swapped all 165 wireless access points!  We worked closely with them to make sure every AP went to the right place and was correctly setup on the new system.  During this time we also mapped out more building plans in Aruba Central that now shows us far more accurate coverage maps based on live data.

With the new network now operational we can use Aruba central for far smarter intelligence about how the network is performing.  We can monitor interference, rogue access points, connection failures, roaming times and much more.