University of Plymouth sets course to better Wi-Fi with Mist AI

A lot has changed with technology and learning since Plymouth last updated its network. The campus Wi-Fi was aging out with slow performance and limited coverage. Students couldn’t easily connect their collection of personal devices, including laptops, gaming consoles, and smart speakers, in the residence halls.

The campus core network also showed signs of age. It was stable, but updating the core switches to the latest software was risky business. The entire upgrade needed to be done in one fell swoop.

Like other universities across the U.K., Plymouth was stepping up its cybersecurity efforts. To maintain its Cyber Essentials certification, a requirement for cyber-insurance, Plymouth needed to better segment the academic and student traffic on its campus network.

Those weren’t the only problems. Like most universities, students needed advance notice before IT technicians could enter their rooms to replace the APs. But unlike most universities, which take advantage of the summer months to do technology upgrades, Plymouth rents out its residence halls to tourists. The upgrade needed to happen fast.

The network refresh started in the residence halls, then expanded across campus. To accelerate the Wi-Fi 6 rollout in the residence halls ahead of the summer tourist season, the IT team set up the network using templates in the Juniper Mist dashboard. Once onsite, the installation team used the Juniper mobile app to scan the AP’s QR code, which automatically registered itself and mapped its location on the floor-plan map.

Plymouth replaced more than 900 APs in three weeks. At first, cabling contractors were tasked with installing 50 APs per day, but the rollout was accelerated when it became clear that an AP could be installed in 15 minutes. An added bonus: the Juniper APs fit into the existing AP brackets, making deployment go even faster.

The university was also able to right-size its network for today’s mobile-first lifestyle. Reducing the number of switches and ultimately power usage, helps meet its sustainability goals. Before the pandemic, the network typically connected 12,000 wired and 8,000 wireless devices. Today, that ratio is reversed, and IT adjusted accordingly, expanding the Wi-Fi and scaling back the wired network.

Plymouth made a sea-change in its choice of network vendor and deployed an intelligent, AI-driven Juniper® Mist™ network. Juniper APs and switches are connected to Juniper Mist cloud, driven by Mist AI™ to deliver optimized network experiences for students, faculty and staff and their devices.