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The Renton
School District
has selected
Meraki’s MR24
cloud controlled
wireless access
points to
provide
enterprise-class
WiFi to Renton’s
16,000 students,
faculty and
staff. The
Renton School
District
deployment
covers 28 sites,
including
elementary,
middle and high
schools, the
district office,
facilities, and
the football
stadium. Renton
is the first
school district
in the nation to
adopt the latest
generation of
802.11n WiFi,
featuring
3-stream, 900
Mbps
performance.
Meraki’s high performance MR24
access points are centrally managed
by the award-winning Meraki
Enterprise Cloud Controller.
“Meraki allows me to manage the
network across the entire district,
and I’m a team of one,”
said Todd Baker, Network
Administrator for Renton School
District. “The capabilities of
Meraki’s Cloud Controller are
incredible. There’s one dashboard
for everything, from provisioning
APs to troubleshooting client
issues. The ease of use and powerful
tools greatly reduce my site
visits.”
The Meraki MR24, an ultra
high-performing 3-stream 802.11n
access point, is ideal for dense
classroom environments and
high-bandwidth applications. Renton
is rolling out 352 MR24s in a
deployment totaling more than 415
Meraki access points. The
campus-wide coverage supports
Renton’s Computer on Wheels (COW)
program, which provides classrooms
with “COW carts” to stream video,
data and other media.
Renton leveraged Meraki’s
contract with the Washington
Learning Source (WLS), which
facilitates deployments for
Washington state school districts.
Prior to selecting Meraki, Baker
carefully evaluated a number of
networking vendors. In a performance
test of 2 finalists, the Meraki MR24
outperformed in WiFi range.
Moreover, the ease of use and
reliability of Meraki’s cloud
controller impressed Baker. “I’ve
had a controller go bad on me in the
past. With Meraki’s cloud
controller, I’ll never have to deal
with that again,” Baker said.
In selecting Meraki, Renton
School District saved $1 million,
enabling it to invest in new
classroom learning technologies.
“This project was funded by our
community from the 2008 voter
approved Technology Levy,” said
Stosh Morency, Director of
Information Management Services.
“Working with Meraki allowed the
district to add wireless
building-wide in 28 facilities and
still finish $1 million under
budget. These savings will fund
additional technology in our
classrooms helping keep our students
ahead of the curve.”
Meraki has been deployed in over
18,000 customer networks worldwide,
including Stanford University,
British Telecom, Burger King,
Starbucks, and M.I.T. Meraki was
named a visionary in Gartner’s Magic
Quadrant for Wireless LAN, and won
Techworld’s Wireless and Mobility
Product of the Year.
The Renton School District
educates students enrolled in its 23
elementary, middle and high schools
in and around the city of Renton in
King County, Washington. The award
winning school district is at the
frontier of technology
implementation in accordance with
its technology plan to promote and
facilitate learning with emerging
networking technologies.
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