Case Study: The College of William & Mary achieves fault-tolerant, cloud-managed Wi‑Fi and simplified NAC integration with Extreme Networks

Historic University Prepares for the Future of Wireless Networking

William & Mary needed comprehensive, future‑proof wireless coverage for its new Alan B. Miller Hall and broader 1200‑acre campus, with specific requirements for 802.11n support, high reliability/fault tolerance, easy integration with its home‑grown NAC, and simple deployment and management due to limited IT staff. After evaluating multiple vendors, the college selected Extreme Networks and its ExtremeSwitching, ExtremeCloud IQ and ExtremeWireless components for a cloud‑based, distributed architecture that met those needs.

Extreme Networks implemented a software‑defined access solution (including SD‑LAN AP250 access points) and has deployed over 1,000 access points campus‑wide. The Extreme Networks solution delivered centralized configuration and monitoring, seamless NAC integration with segmented user policies and WPA2 for faculty/staff, eliminated single points of failure for user traffic, simplified management and provisioning, and produced a resilient, scalable wireless network that has performed reliably while continuing to be rolled out and updated.

William & Mary

Norman Elton

Network Engineer