ABS Engineer Update - Bill Waldron on Emory & Henry College Wireless Deployment

During the summer of 2007, ABS was selected by Emory & Henry College, near Abingdon VA, to design and implement a totally new switching infrastructure, a new campus-wide wireless network, and network access control for students and staff. A Cisco Catalyst 6513 core switch was purchased and installed, along with approximately 30 additional Cisco 3560 PoE and non-PoE distribution switches to supplement the existing Cisco switches. Emory & Henry had the advantage of having a fiber backbone from their MDF to nearly every building on the campus. What they did not have was a Layer 3 network. With Layer 3 IDF switches not in the current budget, we went to work designing a segmented Layer 2 network, utilizing the newly purchased 6513 core switch to do the Layer 3 routing. The entire campus was logically subdivided into more than 180 VLANs, segmenting traffic throughout the campus.

With the desire to provide wireless coverage for the entire campus, indoors and outdoors, ABS and Emory & Henry chose the Cisco Unified Wireless solution. Within the 6513 core switch, two Wireless Integrated Service Modules, or WISMs, were implemented for redundant wireless management. Each WISM contains 2 Wireless LAN Controllers and each WLC is capable of managing 150 APs. For outdoor wireless coverage, Cisco 1510 LWAPP MESH APs were strategically placed throughout the campus to provide 802.11g coverage for clients in 100% of the populated areas. For indoor coverage, Cisco 1242AG LWAPP APs were used to provide wireless access in each of the approximately 48 buildings on campus. The result was an all-encompassing WLAN that provides wireless network access for all students, faculty, and staff, regardless of where they are located on this historic campus. Emory & Henry College became the first College in the state of Virginia to attain Unified Wireless coverage on 100% of their campus.

Emory & Henry also had several buildings located just outside of the campus boundaries that had no wired infrastructure to support students or staff. To spread the campus network to these outlying areas, MESH wireless links were designed, utilizing the 802.11a backbone of the Cisco 1510 APs, as well as several Cisco 1030 APs. The solution worked perfectly; it even created one bridge link to a guest residence located more than a quarter of a mile across the campus golf course. Users can now roam across the entire campus, maintaining a reliable wireless link to the EHC Wireless Network.

In order to control access to the newly wired and wireless networks, ABS and college IT staff chose Cisco Network Access Control, or NAC, and Cisco Clean Access to provide approved access to network resources and assurance that minimum requirements were met by all clients accessing those resources. Using a combination of “In-band” and “Out-of-band” configurations allowed the same redundant NAC cluster to manage wired and wireless clients throughout the campus network.

This project was started in mid-June 2007, after students vacated a large portion of the buildings. The wiring of all data drops to support the more than 200 APs was subcontracted to Teleconnect Inc., out of Johnson City, TN. The team at Teleconnect pulled off nothing short of several small miracles in wiring each of the more than 40 historic buildings on the campus, and did it on schedule. Our promise to Emory & Henry was to complete the project by the time students returned to school in August, providing them with a fully functional wireless environment. We achieved this, with time to spare, due to the hard work and dedication of the ABS Engineers.

Emory & Henry College now plans to add WCS, or Wireless Control System, to the solution. This will give them central management, reporting, and monitoring of the 4 Wireless LAN Controllers and all 200+ APs throughout the campus. This type of centralized management is very important when a school has to control large quantities of technology with a small IT staff.

Map of E&H Campus:


~Bill

Bill Waldron
CCNA, CAWFS, MCSE, MCSA
Senior Technology Architect
ABS Technology Architects