Rowan County, NC

Overview

The Rowan County Information Systems team supports 22 major departments throughout Rowan County, North Carolina, including Health, Social Services, the Sheriff’s Office, Tax, Planning, Emergency Services, Parks, and Libraries. Cisco Meraki access points, switches, and security appliances are deployed throughout the 22 county departments to support networking demands.

Original Networking Challenges

• Lack of dedicated network staff called for easy to manage and scalable solution
• Needed to replace wireless controllers and end-of-life equipment
• Required a secure, reliable connection for internal wireless traffic

 

Why Cisco Meraki

• Reliable solution that is simple to manage and configure
• Instant visibility into network status at distributed sites
• Flexibility to bring new devices online or perform network troubleshooting in dispersed buildings remotely
• Easy to scale and add more devices as county’s technology needs increase
• Various levels of administration privileges for those on the technical staff

Once we saw the backend interface and the tie-ins of switches, security appliances, access points and systems management under a single pane of glass, we wanted to consolidate from our other platforms.

 

Randy Cress

Systems and Network Manager

 

The Deployment

• Indoor access points located in government buildings, clinics, and various physical outposts in the area
• Z1 teleworker gateway appliances deployed in police cars, ambulances, and book mobiles provide remote wireless access.
• Security appliances and access points placed in libraries and airports
• Switches distributed in administrative buildings and remote sites for easy port-level visibility and control

 

Results

• General access to the network for employees and public
• One county SSID for ease of management, with group policies to prioritize levels of access
• County-owned devices grouped for higher priority usage
• Centralized management and visibility into all network switches, ports, applications, users, and devices
• Meraki MX devices provide site-to-site VPN for split traffic for quick, direct access to the Internet, while only tunneling voice and video back to the core