Case Study: St. Joseph University achieves campus-wide, reliable high-performance Wi‑Fi with RUCKUS Networks

Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi Gives Students, Teachers And Guests The Kind Of Wi-Fi Experience They Experience At Home, But Puts It Everywhere on Campus

St. Joseph’s University, a private Jesuit school in Philadelphia serving over 9,000 students across 82 buildings, struggled with a legacy Wi‑Fi network that couldn’t keep up with a surge in mobile devices and modern teaching needs. Students and faculty faced slow, unreliable connections and the small IT team spent excessive time troubleshooting coverage and performance issues campus‑wide.

The university deployed a campus‑wide Ruckus solution—780 dual‑band 802.11n access points managed by ZoneDirector 3000, with VLAN segmentation, BeamFlex antennas, Ruckus Bonjour Gateway for Apple/Smart TV streaming, and 802.1x/DPSK authentication—treating APs as edge switches for better traffic control. The rollout delivered dramatically improved range and throughput (including a 3x performance boost in the cafeteria), simplified management, reliable BYOD support, enabled classroom streaming, and freed IT staff from constant wireless firefighting.

St. Joseph University

Jim Brady

Director of Network Services