Case Study: The Field Museum achieves reliable guest Wi‑Fi and simplified network management with Cisco Meraki

The Field Museum - Customer Case Study

The Field Museum in Chicago, a 12 million square‑foot natural history museum that welcomes over 2 million visitors annually, faced difficult wireless coverage across large open exhibits and outdoor lawns, legacy networking gear that required specialized expertise, and no remote management—forcing a small IT team to be on call 24/7. To address these challenges the museum selected Cisco Meraki and its cloud‑managed networking (Meraki MR access points, MS switches and MX security appliances).

Cisco Meraki deployed 200+ MR16 access points, 31 MS220/320/420 switches and an MX100, completed a no‑cost site survey via the Meraki dashboard, and pushed remote configurations so devices were plug‑and‑play—finishing the rollout in four weeks (ahead of the six‑week window). The Meraki solution delivered strong signal in challenging materials, a guest network averaging 1,200 clients and 3 TB of data daily, 10‑gig capable switching, Air Marshal intrusion detection, heatmaps for visitor flow, and VLAN‑segmented ticketing—allowing the small IT team at The Field Museum to save time and money while monitoring and managing the network remotely.

The Field Museum

Tony Lam

Manager of Technology Operations