Case Study: Ottawa University achieves reliable, campus‑wide Wi‑Fi and simplified cloud network management with Cisco Meraki

Ottawa University - Customer Case Study

Ottawa University, a 3,000‑student institution supported by a two‑person IT team, faced an aging, multi‑vendor Layer 2 network that was difficult to manage, required manual updates, and could no longer deliver reliable campus‑wide Wi‑Fi (students even lost coverage at football games). To modernize and simplify operations they chose Cisco Meraki—deploying cloud‑managed wireless access points, MS switches, MX security/SD‑WAN appliances and the Meraki Dashboard.

Cisco Meraki replaced Ottawa’s patchwork stack with a unified, cloud‑managed Layer 3 solution that enabled remote configuration, traffic shaping, next‑generation firewalling, content filtering and site‑to‑site VPNs. The result: pervasive, seamless Wi‑Fi across campus, the ability for two admins to manage networks from anywhere, a camera fault diagnosis that saved the school hundreds of dollars, preconfigured gear that avoided weeks of travel and extra hires, and simpler single‑vendor support.

Ottawa University

Adam Caylor

Manager of Network Operations