Case Study: Alvin ISD achieves district-wide high-density Wi‑Fi for 1:1 and BYOD with Cisco Meraki

Supporting high-density Wi-Fi across school district for 1:1 and BYOD initiatives

Alvin ISD, a K–12 district serving roughly 19,000 students and 2,500 staff across 250 square miles, needed to support a growing 1:1 and BYOD initiative (about 4,400 student netbooks plus thousands of other devices). The district’s aging HP ProCurve infrastructure (≈530 single‑radio APs) struggled with high client density, manual AP management, and interference, so Alvin ISD evaluated and selected Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN (cloud‑managed MR series APs) to provide centralized management, high‑density performance, and RF optimization.

Cisco Meraki deployed a cloud management license and 771 MR14 APs (later adding 200+ MR18s and 60 MR26s) to blanket the district, with installation completed in under three weeks. Meraki’s auto RF optimization, mesh/self‑healing, airtime fairness, and dashboard reporting enabled Alvin ISD to run extremely high device densities (testing showed 180 netbooks across two APs), eliminate connectivity complaints, speed deployments (student helpers installed APs), expand BYOD, and increase classroom device usage — all while giving IT realtime visibility and control via the Meraki dashboard.

Alvin ISD

John Wilds

Network Manager