Case Study: University of Essex achieves 10x system capacity and doubled Wi‑Fi coverage with HPE Aruba Networking

University of Essex - Customer Case Study

The University of Essex faced a rapid surge in Wi‑Fi usage as students, staff and visitors brought multiple devices, overwhelming an aging Aruba deployment (two controllers and 250 APs) and creating the need to expand coverage, support modern wireless standards and dramatically increase system capacity with minimal disruption. Network manager Andrew Larkin also needed better resilience across the university’s three main campuses and simpler guest and access control for events and visiting academics.

Working with Aruba partner Khipu Networks, the university replaced legacy 11bg APs with AP105/AP135 models, installed six new 7000‑series controllers (deployed as controller pairs across three campuses), and doubled the number of APs. They added AirWave 700 for monitoring and ClearPass Policy Manager/ClearPass Guest for secure and flexible visitor authentication (including campus‑specific Eduroam and guest VLANs), resulting in doubled coverage, a ten‑fold increase in capacity, upgradeability to 802.11ac/11ad, improved resilience and minimal user disruption.

University of Essex

Andrew Larkin

Network Manager