Case Study: Nazareth Area School District achieves mobile-first, reliable Wi‑Fi for learning and campus safety with HPE Aruba Networking

Boosting student success with an Aruba mobile-first network from edge to core

Nazareth Area School District, a 4,800+ student district in Eastern Pennsylvania, faced rising licensing costs and legacy equipment that couldn’t keep up with a planned one-to-one mobile learning initiative. With a lean IT staff, the district needed to modernize its network from the edge to the core to deliver reliable, high-performance connectivity for teachers, students and safety systems.

Nazareth standardized on Aruba, deploying two Aruba 8320 core switches running ArubaOS‑CX and Network Analytics Engine, upgrading backbone capacity (10Gbps today, scalable to 100Gbps) and rolling out Aruba indoor and outdoor Wi‑Fi with Mobility Master and ClearPass for secure device and IoT access. The upgrade supported a smooth rollout of 1,600 Chromebooks with no complaints, enabled outdoor coverage for the NaviGate Prepared emergency app and drills, improved classroom adoption of VR/AR and cloud tools, and simplified management with responsive vendor support.

Nazareth Area School District

Michael Uelses

Director of Information Technology