At a guess, I think the long-term effects of wi-fi radiation would pale into insignificance when compared to the effect of children sitting at a computer or watching TV for 12 hours a day instead of getting the appropriate amount of physical exercise and face-to-face social interaction.

Thanks -
M Lee

Yes we are engaged with the Min Edu, as are most other wireless vendors…. Arron has kindly offered a reference school for you, of course there are others, let me know if you need more. I believe you can see cost savings by deploying a WLAN. Imagine one or two cable drops to deploy a couple of Xirrus arrays to cover 3 to 6 classrooms, versus cabling so that every student could be connected via the wire…
Cheers
Jennine.

We met a while back at an Auckland Software Developers evening. I dropped you back to your hotel with the guys from Digital Fusion. Great to see Xero is going from strength to strength (I’m playing with the API between projects).

We’re working with Kalooma down in Tauranga and have a large reference school here (Mt Maunganui College – http://www.mmc.school.nz). We operate their network in conjunction with their own onsite IT support.

The school presently has ~1300 students and close to 100% WiFi coverage.

It’s very cost effective provided it’s setup correctly to start with. The solution we used there is a mixture of Xirrus and Bluesocket. This allowed the new wireless network to replace the existing while still giving capacity to add new AP’s as required. As Bluesocket isn’t just a wireless solution, it allows physically cabled filtering as well it’s an ideal solution for boarding houses, hotels, conference facilities and airports.

Wellington Airport (the free one requiring just your email address – the name escapes me now) uses and older Bluesocket solution but still delivers a controlled Internet connection well.

The new funding from the MinEdu (MoE) will allow for wireless equipment to be used where it’s prohibitively expensive to install cabling. Xirrus is proven to deliver in this area with high density usage (we’ve used these at conferences with ~300 delegates with the only problem being the hotel’s Internet connection – not fast enough!).

Mt Maunganui College are happy to have visitors to check out their network. Easiest way is to contact me via our website so I can arrange this.

Arron Edwards,
Totali Limited

I am the BDM at Kalooma Technologies and we are the distributors for Xirrus in NZ. Rod we met at the Small Business Expo in the HB just a few months ago and I had a Xirrus WiFi array on show. Xirrus can definitely deliver on high density wifi requirements, schools being just one great example of this kind of requirement. Check out these video press releases from Australian schools that have gone down the Xirrus path after trialling a number of vendors. Monash University in Melbourne have also just chosen to deploy Xirrus in their lecture theatres and other campus areas with high density requirements.

http://www.xirrus.com/press_releases/?id=290
http://www.xirrus.com/press_releases/?id=284

Yes traditional WiFi architecture ie single AP’s will struggle to cope with density requirements of a normal school classroom, say up to 30 students. Xirrus is a unique WiFi architecture with anywhere from 8 to 16 radio’s per single array, directional antennae’s, stateful firewall and controller all onboard a single array, it means far less cable drops for the school ie a much lower cost to deploy, easier to manage etc…

thanks
Jennine.

My experience with Wi-Fi access points with many clients (20-30) connected is that the performance drops off very quickly. and so you need a whole bunch of access points to provide anywhere near the performance of a cabled network.