Building bright futures

Over 100 years of distinction

The University of Redlands brings access and opportunity together to equip students with the tools for building a bright future for themselves and those around them. The residential institution serves more than 3,400 undergraduate and graduate students on its 160-acre southern California campus in Redlands and, since the merger in 2019, on its 13-acre northern Marin campus in San Anselmo, a short drive from San Francisco.

“Our university has a rich history of being a leader in delivering a student-focused, personalized education that includes faculty innovation, groundbreaking research, student achievements, and transformative community outreach,” said Chris Kincaid, CTO for the University of Redlands. “We provide students with a foundation for leading lives of meaning, impact, and joy.”

Solving problems and planning for a better world

To facilitate Redlands culture of integrating spatial thinking into instruction, research, and administration for solving problems and planning for a better world, the institution set out to modernize its legacy networking infrastructure throughout academic, recreational, and residential spaces. This included providing seamless mobility across 160 acres outdoors on its main campus.

“Our heterogeneous legacy Wi-Fi was difficult to manage and was becoming increasingly obsolete,” Kincaid said. “As we sought to provide secure, modern experiences without adding administrative burdens to our lean IT staff, we needed to refresh our infrastructure with a unified, centralized solution that is easily managed.”

Streamlined, all-inclusive, high-performance connectivity

Although already familiar with HPE Aruba Networking from a previous deployment, Redlands also evaluated another networking vendor. “The other company gave us inconsistent answers to our requests for best practices recommendations,” explained Bruce Entwistle, Network Manager for Information Technology Services at the University of Redlands.

“The HPE Aruba Networking solution was less complicated to deploy, the licensing was all-inclusive, and we received clear, consistent responses to all of our questions,” he added.

Seamless and secure mobility indoors and out

Ultimately, Redlands selected HPE Aruba Networking’s wireless Wi-Fi 6E for indoor mobility and rugged outdoor access points (APs) for seamless connectivity in exterior spaces.
To streamline, secure, and simplify management, Redlands adopted two AI-power tools, HPE Aruba Networking Central for cloud-based network administration and HPE Aruba Networking User Experience Insight (UXI), for uncovering network degradations proactively and in real time, before they impact experiences.

In addition, Redlands chose HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass, with built-in Zero Trust and secure access service edge (SASE) cybersecurity, implemented in the university’s Microsoft Azure cloud. “Using HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass we can securely connect every user and provide them with a uniform experience, regardless which campus they are physically on,” Entwistle said.

For supporting its new Wi-Fi at its San Anselmo campus, the University also adopted automation-powered HPE Aruba Networking CX Switching for the wired infrastructure.

Delivering home-like experiences

To deliver the home-like experiences students expect in residence halls, Redlands began its Wi-Fi update by deploying a hospitality access point (AP) in each student room.

“Our IT team completed the project during our summer recess,” said Entwistle. This was made possible by a combination of Redland’s new hospitality APs, which allowed for utilizing existing cable, and HPE Aruba Networking Central, which provided rapid configuration with plug-and-play deployment.

“In addition to speeding up the deployment, our HPE Aruba Networking hospitality Wi-Fi solution saved about 80% on residence hall implementation costs,” Entwistle says.

When students returned to campus, Wi-Fi satisfaction soared with complaints plunging to nearly zero. “Every year students come to campus with more devices,” Kincaid said. “No matter what type of IoT device is the next big thing, our new network will provide high-performance, secure connectivity for students to use it.”

Troubleshooting reduced from days to minutes

For rare occasions when issues are reported, Redlands combines the strengths of its new AI-powered management solutions to investigate and resolve them rapidly. This not only enhanced user experiences, but also enables supporting operational efficiency and resilience for a university with campuses 500 miles apart.

For example, a student reported that Wi-Fi didn’t work in her dorm room, which HPE Aruba Networking Central revealed was due to an offline AP. “With that information we could immediately set up an appointment to reconnect it,” Entwistle said. “In the past, it might have taken us days to determine the source.”

Remote troubleshooting is equally improved. “We recently had an outage at our San Anselmo campus over a weekend,” recalled Entwistle. “It’s a day’s travel, each way, to troubleshoot on site, but HPE Aruba Networking UXI instantly uncovered the issue and the campus was connected again in minutes.”

Immersive, IoT- enabled academics

From an academic perspective, Redlands new Wi-Fi is enabling innovation across all departments. This includes new course offerings, such as multidisciplinary majors in Data Science and Kinesiology, as well as modern academic models that leverage IoT-enabled technologies like AR, VR, and other immersive reality platforms.

Redlands is also home to a globally-recognized Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program, which is a prominent user of wireless connectivity.

“We’re fortunate to be physically located nearby the world’s leading producer of GIS software, Esri, that turns data into visual insights,” Kincaid said. “We have a partnership with Esri that attracts students from every continent for undergraduate, graduate, and executive GIS degrees, each of which rely heavily on Wi-Fi for teaching and research.”

Generating excitement and revenues

Whether indoors or outdoors, connectivity is also key for supporting athletic and special event activities.

As an NCAA Division III institution, Redlands athletic departments utilize Wi-Fi extensively. “With the exception of some areas of our football stadium, our indoor and outdoor athletics facilities are fully Wi-Fi enabled,” said Kincaid. “This includes our basketball arena, aquatics center, soccer field, baseball/softball stadium, and fitness center.”

Outdoor campus and external events also depend on Wi-Fi for providing exceptional experiences. “In addition to campus-sponsored activities, our events team also hosts external meetings, conferences, retreats, and both of our campuses are popular wedding destinations,” Kincaid said.

“In addition to providing community service opportunities, such events are important revenue generators when your institution supports 94 percent of students with some form of financial aid,” he added.

Resiliency minimizes disruptions

Redlands high-performance outdoor Wi-Fi is also making the institution more resilient.

“During the height of the pandemic we were able to hold our classes outdoors,” said Kincaid. “Although fewer classes meet outdoors today, our outdoor Wi-Fi is still heavily used for academics.”

Should another situation arise that requires academics to move outdoors, “our institution will be well-positioned to minimize disruption,” he added.

Powering the innovations of the future

Looking ahead, Redlands is considering a number of ways to expand and extend its HPE Aruba Networking deployment. This includes implementing CX switches for the main campus and evaluating Private 5G for augmenting existing Wi-Fi.

Regardless what the future holds, the University of Redlands IT staff is ready to meet evolving needs. “In partnership with HPE Aruba Networking, we’re providing seamless connectivity across all of our campuses, which includes enabling those who travel between them to smoothly access our EduRoam platform,” said Kincaid.

“With HPE Aruba Networking we have a responsive partner that can supply us with the future-proof offerings required for delivering outstanding academic experiences for years to come,” he said.