Case Study: Northwest Missouri State University achieves campus-wide, high-density Wi‑Fi coverage with Riverbed

Northwest Missouri State University Brings Pervasive Wi-Fi to Campus Transforming Classroom Learning

Xirrus worked with large campus customers — including Brigham Young University–Idaho and Northwest Missouri State University — that faced fragmented, confusing and capacity‑limited Wi‑Fi environments. BYU‑Idaho’s hotspot approach left students and faculty unsure where they could connect, and Northwest’s legacy single‑controller design created a performance bottleneck and single point of failure. Both institutions needed pervasive, easy‑access wireless that could support multiple devices per student, high‑density classrooms and growing mobile demand.

Both universities deployed Xirrus Array‑based Wi‑Fi to deliver distributed intelligence, scalable capacity and wider coverage. BYU‑Idaho installed nearly 700 APs/Arrays (planned to approach 800) for 100% indoor coverage and capacity for about 6,500 simultaneous devices, while Northwest rolled out roughly 400 Arrays to cover over 90% of campus and support thousands of concurrent users. The results included fewer infrastructure costs, reliable connectivity for large classrooms and campus venues, successful campus‑wide online testing, improved classroom mobility and strong faculty and student satisfaction.

Northwest Missouri State University

Timothy Carlyle

Director of Network Computing and Senior Unix Administrator