Hautes études d'ingénieur (HEI)

Overview

Since 1885, HEI in Lille, France has been providing students with the education needed for engineering roles, while also contributing to industrial applied research and development and extending their services to the professional arena. The school has over 15,000 alumni, 2,000 current students, and hundreds of staff and teachers dedicated to inspiring innovation, developing students’ individual talents, and ensuring success. Technical Project Manager Fournel Yannick and his IT team of two deployed the Cisco Meraki solution to provide students and teachers with the resources needed to excel.

Original Networking Challenges

• High density usage caused network strain and was not designed for meeting the demands of different user groups
• The physically complex building and dense construction materials created a challenging wireless environment

Everything is really easy with Meraki; it’s not necessary to be a network specialist. You plug and play and everything is good.

 

Fournel Yannick

Technical Project Manager

Why Cisco Meraki

• Intuitive dashboard provides deep visibility into the overall network, as well as granular insight into devices, users, and applications
• Dedicated security radio in each AP continuously scans the environment to identify and protect against security threats
• Small IT team is able to remotely monitor and manage the network infrastructure from anywhere via the web-based dashboard
• Custom SSIDs allow the IT team to configure association requirements and usage restrictions based on user group

 

The Deployment

• Installed 152 Meraki MR26 APs and 3 MX60W Security Appliances with wireless capabilities, including a dedicated warm spare for added resiliency
• Deployment took just two months including complete installation of every device and dashboard configurations
• Multiple school sites and home teleworker units connected via automatic site-to-site VPN
• Specific VLAN established for AP traffic and 3 SSIDs customized for staff, student, and guest use, complete with RADIUS authentication or walled garden, as needed

 

Results

• Simplicity of the platform means the team doesn’t need specialized network training for daily management and monitoring
• Automatic RF optimization, built into the security radio, continuously scans and adapts device settings for the highest performance
• Scalable solution permits the IT team to add new devices as needed in minutes, without having to update or change management style
• IT team is able to control SSID broadcasting and scheduling availability based on AP tagging
• New features and firmware updates are automatically downloaded and applied at no additional cost, providing the school with a future-proof solution