Customer Case Study
School District Enhances Interactive Learning
Experience
Ligonier Valley High School installed Cisco wireless network to provide foundation for
21st century teaching and learning.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Business Challenge
The Ligonier Valley School District is home to approximately 1700
Customer Name: Ligonier Valley School District
Industry: K-12 education
Location: Ligonier, Pennsylvania
Number of Users: 240 concurrent mobile device
users
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
● Enhance learning experience through more
reliable access to interactive multimedia and
online applications
● Deliver secure, reliable wireless access to
high school students, teachers, and staff
● Reduce IT maintenance efforts
NETWORK SOLUTION
● High-performance Cisco Unified Access
solution with integrated mobility, management,
and self-healing intelligence
BUSINESS RESULTS
● Provided fast, reliable access to interactive,
media-intensive learning solutions
● Standardized on single-vendor network
infrastructure to provide better control and
fast, robust access
● Centralized wireless infrastructure
troubleshooting and maintenance to reduce IT
overhead
students. Spread across more than 230 square miles, Ligonier
Valley is one of the largest geographical school districts in
Pennsylvania. The district’s students are housed in four buildings:
Laurel Valley Elementary (K-5), RK Mellon Elementary (K-5),
Ligonier Middle School (6-8), and Ligonier High School (9-12).
The district continually seeks to upgrade its technology infrastructure
to enhance teaching and learning. Increasingly, that involves
providing robust wireless network capabilities to teachers, staff, and
students to support learning through web-based applications.
Teachers and administrators each have their own district-supplied
laptops, used to access the Pearson Power School student
information system, as well as programs such as IEP Writer for
creating individualized education programs for gifted and specialneeds students.
Students typically access the Internet and learning applications
through mobile carts equipped with wireless-enabled laptops
checked out at the beginning of each class period, yet it took a
substantial portion of the class period to connect the laptops to
online applications.
© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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The need for high-throughput wireless access was especially acute at Ligonier Valley High School, where
hundreds of students, especially those in math and science classrooms located in one wing of the building, vied for
simultaneous wireless connectivity to applications such as Larson Math and Science and the ALEKS one-on-one
instructional system. Whether in the math and science wing or other areas of the school, bandwidth-intensive
streaming video, multicast within classrooms, is common.
Despite growing demand, the district over time had acquired many unmanaged, autonomous wireless access
points from different vendors. Dispersed across facilities without a comprehensive plan, the access points were
designed for small business use rather than the enterprise-scale requirements of a large school district. As a result,
the district, and especially the high school, suffered from spotty, unreliable wireless coverage and manually
intensive troubleshooting and maintenance.
The lack of comprehensive, managed, and robust wireless coverage at Ligonier is being further challenged by
district plans to allow high school students to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) beginning in the 2012-2013 school
year. As a result, the district needed to prepare with a robust wireless network, centrally managed to streamline
maintenance and better control student access to help ensure compliance with the Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act (FERPA).
Network Solution
Lasting investment
As demands on the wireless infrastructure continued to rise, Ligonier Valley School District and its outsourced IT
vendor, In-Shore Technologies, sought a more comprehensive, centrally managed, enterprise-class wireless
networking solution. The district’s initial goal: achieve flawless wireless access with 100 percent coverage
anywhere within Ligonier Valley High School and reduce troubleshooting and maintenance overhead.
“One of the biggest benefits we’ve seen with the Cisco Aironet 3600s is
improved multimedia streaming to enhance the interactive learning
experience at the high school.”
— Michele Bonerigo, Client Business Program Manager, In-Shore Technologies, Inc.
With reliability, longevity, innovation, and ease of use and maintenance as key selection criteria, the district and In®
®
Shore Technologies selected Cisco Aironet 3600 Series Access Points for the high school. The Cisco Aironet
3600 Series delivers up to three times more coverage and high data rates to support the school’s laptops that
request network access. Ligonier can provide this connectivity securely, reliably, and with excellent performance
®
and manageability. Central to these capabilities is the core and distribution network, built on Cisco Catalyst 3560
and 2960 Series Switches.
According to Michele Bonerigo, client business program manager for In-Shore Technologies, in-depth evaluations
confirmed the Cisco Aironet 3600 Series as the best access point on the market. And, says John Young, network
engineer for In-Shore Technologies, “Cisco is the only vendor with a wireless solution that supports 4x4 radios and
3 Spatial Stream technology. This differentiator was important for Ligonier Valley School District, because the goal
st
was to ensure that this investment in 21 century learning technologies would last for years.”
© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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High throughput and interference detection
®
The Cisco Aironet 3600 Series includes Cisco CleanAir technology to automatically detect and mitigate radio
frequency (RF) interference for a self-healing, self-optimizing network and Cisco ClientLink 2.0 to boost
performance and range. The high school also uses Cisco 5508 Wireless Controllers for reliable performance,
enhanced flexibility, and zero service-loss to support the school’s critical need for robust wireless access. With the
Cisco Aironet 3600 Series Access Points and Cisco 5508 Wireless Controllers, the district and the technology staff
at In-Shore Technologies have created a borderless network that allows the high school to connect students,
faculty, or staff members to any device or learning application.
The high school now provides a high-performance 802.11n wireless network in all interior areas, many where
coverage did not exist. Students and faculty have ready access to online applications and media required for
teaching and learning, with capacity to spare. Even in packed classrooms and in the math and science wing,
faculty and students can use laptops over the wireless network to watch streaming video or engage with one-onone instructional systems, increasing interactivity and providing an engaging learning environment.
Business Results
PRODUCT LIST
Enhanced interactive learning
Cisco Unified Access wireless solution
● Cisco Aironet 3600 Access Points with
CleanAir technology
Ligonier Valley High School currently has wireless coverage across
Routing and Switching
● Cisco Catalyst 3560X Series Switches
throughout the school day. Cisco Aironet 3600 Series Access Points
● Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series Switches
Network Management
● Cisco 5508 Wireless Controllers
100 percent of the building, where 240 concurrent users are online
offer the high school a wireless foundation that scales easily and is
ready for current and future mobile devices. It is also highly reliable,
and offers exceptional performance for applications requiring high
throughput.
“One of the biggest benefits we’ve seen with the Cisco Aironet 3600s is improved multimedia streaming to enhance
the interactive learning experience at the high school,” says Bonerigo.
Lower IT overhead
Cisco 5508 Wireless Controllers streamline and centralize management of the high school’s access points. The
wireless technology at the high school is now 100 percent Cisco, making In-Shore’s technology administration
tasks far easier and reducing IT management overhead. “We no longer have to wonder which faulty access point is
from which vendor and then try to diagnose the issue a dozen different ways,” says Young. “Instead, we can hop
onto our controller log and diagnose any access point issue across the entire infrastructure remotely, at a glance.”
Through Cisco CleanAir technology, the IT team at In-Shore can automatically detect and mitigate RF interference
to help protect performance, increase reliability, and deliver unprecedented RF spectrum troubleshooting remotely,
resulting in a high-quality, highly secure experience. The In-Shore team can detect sources of RF interference such
as Bluetooth headsets or Wi-Fi-enabled cameras, without having to walk the halls of the high school.
“Previously, we had a 40-minute drive to reach the high school before we could even begin walking through the
hallways in an attempt to detect the cause of RF interference,” says Young. “To sit at a computer in our office and
visually troubleshoot the RF spectrum on the fly is fantastic.”
The high school is well prepared for the upcoming academic year, when BYOD will be allowed. The school will be
able to provide smooth and continuous connectivity to all mobile device users, regardless of the type of browser or
device, all in a controlled and centrally managed environment that helps support FERPA compliance.
© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Page 3 of 4
And, because the Cisco wireless network “just works,” students and teachers have more time for productive
learning, rather than wasting class time trying to connect to applications on the Internet. Says Young, “From both
technology management and learning experience enhancements, nothing beats a Cisco wireless network.”
For More Information
To find out more about the Cisco Wireless Solutions, go to:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/index.html.
Printed in USA
© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
C36-708084-00
05/12
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