The Punjab Engineering College (PEC) University of Technology in Chandigarh, India, has deployed Proxim's Wi-Fi mesh equipment to provide a secure wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) for its residential faculty areas. The university selected Proxim after evaluating several products and determining that adding centralised WLAN switches was cost prohibitive. As a result, they deployed Proxim's ORiNOCO(R) AP-4000MR-LR and AP-4900MR-LR products to create a dependable and secure wireless mesh network that could provide the high-performance access needed throughout the residential areas.
"The Wireless Mesh Network was required to be deployed as a part of a sponsored project from the Indian Government in order to perform experiments relating to the draft 802.11s standard and hence for conducting real time experiments, testing and validation of results," said Prof. Divya, Chief Investigator of the sponsored project at PEC University of Technology. "With this mesh, we are able to deploy secure, scalable and reliable wireless connectivity which was much needed."
The project was funded by a grant that was awarded to PEC University of Technology by the Department of Information Technology in the Ministry of Communications & IT of the Government of India.
"In addition to serving as an experimental testbed, the university's wireless mesh network is also being used for providing wireless connectivity to the faculty residential areas of PEC University of Technology. Such a network can then be replicated for other solutions such as wireless video surveillance in nearby cities, WISPs, and city-wide wireless networks," said Dr. Sanjeev Sofat, Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, PEC University of Technology.
"We are grateful to the Indian Government for providing the research grant to test and validate the mesh network and to showcase the technology at our campus," said Dr. Manoj Datta, Director, PEC University of Technology.
In addition to wireless mesh equipment, Proxim Wireless provides an extensive end-to-end wireless product line that includes WLANs, WiMAX, point-to-multipoint, and point-to-point wireless backhaul. So, as the university decides to expand the network -- or as other organisations and cities follow PEC University of Technology's lead and deploy wireless networks -- Proxim has a line of products designed to work together to create scalable wireless networks of any size.