Case Study: Plano Independent School District achieves high-capacity, cost-saving district-wide Wi-Fi with Riverbed (Xirrus)

Nationally Ranked Texas School District Achieves More for Less with Xirrus Wireless Arrays

Riverbed Xirrus partnered with large educational institutions — including Brigham Young University–Idaho (15,000 students across 40 buildings) and Plano Independent School District (covering 100 square miles and 55,000 students) — to address fragmented, hotspot-based Wi‑Fi that left students and faculty unsure where they could connect and could not support rising device density or 1:1/BYOD initiatives. BYU‑Idaho needed pervasive, residence‑hall and classroom coverage for heavy simultaneous use; Plano needed a future‑proof replacement for legacy hotspots that could scale across 80+ sites.

Xirrus deployed high-density Wi‑Fi Arrays — nearly 700 APs at BYU‑Idaho (planned expansion to ~800) and district‑wide Arrays for Plano — delivering 100% indoor coverage, support for thousands of concurrent devices (6,500+ at BYU), and up to 4–8x the coverage and capacity of conventional APs. The result: far fewer devices and cable runs, significant infrastructure and O&M cost savings (Plano used ~80% fewer devices), more reliable connectivity with fewer dropped sessions, easier centralized management, and enabled dynamic classroom technologies like streaming, downloads and clicker/online learning.

Plano Independent School District

Dan Armstrong

Director of Technical Support Services, Plano ISD