ABS Engineer Update - Larry Woods on VBCPS Wireless Deployment

As of January 9th, 2008, and over the last year, ABS has worked directly with Virginia Beach City Public Schools to design and install a district wireless coverage implementation project. We have currently completely finished 24 of 86 schools. To date, we have three more High Schools to go and have completed all but two Middle Schools. The end result will be a completely mobile, flexible wireless environment to allow teachers/students the ability to do research and testing through wireless laptop computers wherever the school has the space.

This deployment is currently one of the largest installations ever in Virginia and even along the east coast. It involves 18 Cisco Wireless Integrated Service Modules (also known as WiSMs) that accounts for 36 Cisco Wireless Controllers over seven Cisco 7613 Routers, three Cisco Wireless Control Systems (to allow for management of all Controllers and Access Points), and up to 4,500 Cisco Wireless Access Points. Next week, we will be installing three Cisco Location Appliances that will use the Wireless Infrastructure to triangulate the locations of Wireless clients on floor plan maps of schools imported into the system. We will also be upgrading the entire system from version 4.0.217.0 version of code to 4.2.62.0 permitting the ability to do many more added on features.

We are in the process of installing approximately 160 Cisco 3750 Layer 3 Switches (two per site) and close to 400 Cisco 3560 PoE switches. With this equipment, the network will provide PoE capabilities to all Wireless Access Points and set the Virginia Beach City Public Schools current fiber ring to hand off a 1 Gbps connection to all schools/sites.

Redundancy has been added with multiple connections to the fiber ring and to the equipment at each wiring closet. Redundancy is a big factor in the design of the Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers as well. This system has been designed with the N+1 factor in mind where there is a full redundancy if an entire Cisco 7613 Router chassis goes offline for up to three WiSM modules (six Wireless Controllers). Bottom line, if something happens to a Wireless LAN Controller, the Wireless Access Points that were registered to that Controller will rather seamlessly roam to a backup controller with no problems and barely affecting client wireless usage.

Our plan from this point is to complete the installations of all 86 schools with wireless coverage. After that, there are plans in mind to set Wireless Laptop Carts with Printers installed on top to connect wireless over the network to minimize cables and user confusion also allowing the ability to track laptop carts in buildings. We have also designed and are on the verge of creating a Wireless Guest User access privilege for guests coming in and using the school’s internet connection. This new Wireless infrastructure will also allow for Voice over IP phones to be utilized at each site potentially if this is the direction the school system goes with.

Essentially, we have a very strong plan of attack and have executed this plan almost flawlessly. We have a great team of engineers working hard and diligently through the late hours of the night with the same goal in mind – a perfect installation – for each and every school. This has been very exciting for us and we look forward to continue our efforts even after this project is completed.

~Larry

Larry W. Woods
CAWLFS, CAWLDS, CCNA, CCDA,
CISS, PCWE, PCBA, PCBE
Senior Wireless Architect & Systems Engineer
ABS Technology Architects