Case Study: USS Midway Museum achieves 3X stronger Wi‑Fi, 4X better performance and BLE-based visitor engagement with RUCKUS Networks

Social Media Login and BLE Location Services Bring New Value to Wi-Fi

The USS Midway Museum, the world’s most visited historic naval ship with over 1.2 million annual visitors, faced severe Wi‑Fi challenges across its three‑and‑a‑half‑inch armored flight deck and massive steel structure: unreliable signals, poor coverage, and no easy way to collect visitor demographics or deliver location‑aware content. The museum also wanted BLE wayfinding and a simple social‑media login to improve engagement and gather analytics for marketing and operations.

Working with Equinox Telecom and Ruckus, the museum deployed Ruckus H500 wall switches indoors, R500/R600 APs for flight simulators, T300/T301 sectorized APs on deck and redundant controllers, plus Purple Wi‑Fi for social login and analytics and BLE beacons for location services. The rollout delivered a 3× increase in signal strength, 4× performance improvement, support for hundreds of clients per AP, BLE wayfinding and location‑aware content, and easy social login with rich visitor analytics.

USS Midway Museum

Joe Gursky

IT Director