Case Study: University of New England achieves an all‑wireless, high‑performance 802.11ac campus with HPE Aruba Networking

University of New England - Customer Case Study

The University of New England (UNE), Australia’s oldest regional university with around 23,000 students, 160 buildings and nine residential colleges, needed to modernise a patchy 802.11g wireless network to support growing device density, streaming video and unified communications across widespread campuses. UNE required a secure, campus‑wide Wi‑Fi that would integrate with Microsoft Lync, extend existing network investments and work with a next‑generation firewall for reliable voice, video and data access everywhere.

UNE selected Aruba’s 802.11ac solution, deploying roughly 1,200 indoor and outdoor APs with Aruba AirWave management and Palo Alto firewall integration, installed by UXC Connect. The rollout enabled an all‑wireless campus with high throughput (two internet links per AP), seamless roaming (ClientMatch), and full Lync voice/video support; the IT team now sees up to 2,300 concurrent devices (12,000 total seen recently), faster, more reliable connections, no service complaints and rapid, scalable deployments.

University of New England

Gordon Smith

Associate Director, Infrastructure Services, Information Technology