Case Study: Denver Museum of Nature & Science achieves secure, scalable Wi‑Fi for 1.4 million visitors with HPE Aruba Networking

Aruba Wi-Fi with ClearPass and AirWave mobilizes interactivity for 1.4 million museum visitors annually

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science, a 716,000 sq. ft. cultural and research institution serving 1.4 million visitors annually, needed secure, reliable and easy-to-manage Wi‑Fi to support exhibits, BYOD staff, contractors and high-profile events — all with a lean IT team and strict compliance requirements. Their legacy approach had become complex and hard to manage (multiple SSIDs/VLANs) and couldn’t reliably support new mobile experiences or outdoor connectivity.

Working with Aruba and partner Accuvant, the Museum deployed indoor/outdoor 802.11ac APs, 7200 Series Mobility Controllers, Aruba ClearPass for centralized access control and AirWave for unified network management. The result is pervasive, PCI‑compliant connectivity across the facility that streamlines administration, automatically segments traffic by role, speeds troubleshooting with VisualRF, supports tablet‑based workflows and guest access for 1.4 million visitors — while enabling future mobile engagement initiatives.

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Stan Rehfuss

Technology Systems Manager