Case Study: West Chester University achieves over $1M in infrastructure savings and all‑wireless Gigabit Wi‑Fi with HPE Aruba Networking

Cutting the Cord by Moving to .11ac Saves West Chester Over $1m

West Chester University, a 16,000‑student public university, faced severe Wi‑Fi interference and exploding help‑desk calls as students brought personal routers into residence halls. With mobile devices essential for coursework, streaming and campus life, IT needed a scalable, secure way to deliver reliable wireless service across student housing.

The university deployed an Aruba 802.11ac enterprise WLAN—over 1,000 APs with ClientMatch and AppRF—plus ClearPass (QuickConnect, OnGuard) for secure onboarding, AirWave for centralized management, and Mobility Access Switches for unified access. The all‑wireless strategy supported over 50,000 unique devices, served ~5,000 residents, saved more than $1 million in wired infrastructure costs, cut ~100 metric tons of CO2, and delivered better performance, faster troubleshooting and simpler administration.

West Chester University

Richard Chan

Assistant Director of Networking and Telecommunications