Case Study: Dartmouth College achieves fast, reliable campus-wide Wi‑Fi with Mist AI

Dartmouth Transforms the Campus Experience with AI-Driven Insight and Automation

Dartmouth College faced a rapid surge to roughly 25,000 connected devices and needed campus-wide Wi‑Fi that was faster, more reliable and smarter than its legacy overlay system. To modernize its 18th‑ and 19th‑century buildings and meet student expectations, Dartmouth selected Mist AI for a cloud‑managed, controllerless wireless LAN and location services, using Mist API integration during a phased campus rollout.

Mist AI delivered a cloud-based, microservices Wi‑Fi solution with automated provisioning (Mist API + Ansible), dense AP deployments (about 300 APs planned in two engineering buildings versus 50 previously) and Mist location capabilities. The upgrade improved coverage and reliability, with each AP able to deliver over 200 Mbps, reduced the blast radius of outages (APs still serve the LAN if cloud connectivity is lost), simplified updates and enabled new use cases like location-based security and attendance—helping Dartmouth scale to roughly 200 buildings over a 3–5 year program.

Dartmouth College

Mitch Davis

Chief Information Officer