Upgrading Your Cisco Network Makes Dollars AND Sense

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Upgrading your hardware is a great way to strengthen your network without spending a lot of money. Mexico’s Universidad Panamericana recently found itself in a tough situation when the college’s IT staff determined that their patchwork network couldn’t cope with the demands of its users.

Universidad Panamericana is one of Mexico’s top private universities and is spread out over four separate campuses. There are over 40,000 students, staff and faculty trying to connect to the university Wi-Fi, so this is a network that needed dependability first and foremost. With a 50 percent rise in device use trend on its main Mixcoac campus in Mexico City, this was a situation that was only going to get larger. The IT staff needed a fast and reliable fix for its network, but also one that wouldn’t break the bank.

Thanks to a Wi-Fi network upgrade, Cisco offered the best value for the money.

“Cisco was at least 50 percent cheaper once running costs were factored in,” said Luis Enrique Gómez Sutti, IT Infrastructure Manager at the Universidad Panamericana Mexico City campus. “Plus there was no learning curve.”

Seventy percent of the existing access points needed a software upgrade, which meant that only 30 percent of the hardware had to be replaced. The Mixcoac, Guadalajara and Aguascalientes campuses were all brought up-to-date with new Cisco access points, switches and controllers. The new products that made up the infrastructure include: Cisco Aironet 3700, 3600 and 2700 Access Points, Cisco 8500 and 5500 Series Wireless Controllers and a variety of Cisco Catalyst and Integrated Service routers.

With this new infrastructure suppling high-speed Wi-Fi, the entire college community is using the network more than ever before.

“The average device numbers per user have gone up from 0.5 to three in the last 10 years,” said Ernesto Jonnatan Arroyo Pilatowsky, IT Director at the Aguascalientes campus. “With Cisco we’ve overcome this device growth while increasing Wi-Fi coverage from 80 to 100 percent.”

And it’s not just fast internet that the Universidad Panamericana is thankful for, the built-in Cisco security is great too. Cisco Prime allows a simplified IT management that proactively supervises network usage and allocation. Any problems are quickly targeted and fixed.

To read the entire case study, click here.