Powering the Presidential Debate at Hofstra University

In this exciting election year, we at Cisco are very proud to have supported the first Presidential Debate held on September 26th at Hofstra University.

Although Hofstra has hosted past Presidential debates in 2008 and 2012, this year they had less than nine weeks to design and deliver a secure and operational network to meet the standards of the Commission on Presidential Debates. As Hofstra is a technologically forward-thinking institution, they knew they needed to align with a trusted partner to help them meet the very tight time lines. Hofstra knew that the Cisco and Presidio teams were up to the challenge.

The Cisco team designed an end-to-end Cisco architected network that was leveraged during the events and activities leading up to, during and after the debate. This network – which was segmented from their production network – consisted of access switching, wireless controllers and APs, Unified Communications equipment and Cisco’s NGFW security solution. Presidio focused on the foundational network supporting over 5,000 media personnel and the Cisco Advanced Services team focused on wireless network overlay. Additionally, Hofstra used 6x 1Gbps Internet connections and 500s phone from Verizon.

The entire team’s resourcefulness, tireless effort under time constraints, and painstaking attention to detail led to the successful implementation of this highly visible, nationally televised and globally covered event. We are proud to have been a part of it!