Case Study: Davidson County Community College achieves seamless BYOD and rapid pop-up learning spaces with Cisco Meraki cloud-managed WiFi

Cloud-managed WiFi and switching plus plug & play APs help create new learning spaces

Davidson County Community College faced a rapid shift to a BYOD campus and growing wireless demand across multiple sites, while its legacy three-controller network lacked visibility, simplified management, RADIUS authentication and bandwidth controls. To meet the needs of more than 14,000 students and make it easy to create pop-up learning spaces, the college selected Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed WiFi and switching solution with plug-and-play APs and mesh capabilities.

Cisco Meraki deployed over 75 access points across the main and three offsite campuses, allowing a full rollout in hours and eliminating the need for a hardware controller so a single admin can manage all sites from a web dashboard. The Meraki solution delivered a 50% increase in coverage (fewer APs required), brought wireless to previously unreachable buildings, supports 14,000+ students and BYOD, and added tools like 802.1X RADIUS, multiple SSIDs, client fingerprinting, layer-7 traffic shaping and one‑click security—freeing IT staff to focus on other projects and enabling instant pop-up learning spaces.

Davidson County Community College

Donald Beck

Director of ITS