St Munchins College has recently completed a 4 phase redevelopment of their entire school. The 3 story refurbished building incorporates both a newly built extension located to the rear, using modern construction materials and methods and an old building comprising of mass concrete and steel construction for external and internal walls.
As part of the whole school, ICT fit out, a fully managed Enterprise WiFi network was installed to provide WiFi coverage for the entire school campus. 38 Access Points, connected to a managed 4GB wired network provides both power and connectivity to up to 1,000 devices.
All “Staff” & “Students” traffic is separated on the network so that some devices and resources are only accessible by teachers. Amateur “single password to access” wifi is not used as this would not allow any real security. Users require their regular network credentials to access the wifi system, allowing a greater level of security and stability. This also means that passwords only need to be changed in one place, reducing the management overhead and all traffic is logged back to a user. Bring your own device (BYOD) is fully supported.
Extensive logging is enabled on the wifi system to allow management to check what devices are present, what users are currently connected and what they are accessing.
The school uses two separate internet connections. One is provided by the Department of Education through the HEANet. This connection is the standard 100Mb broadband that is filtered by the Dept. Students use this connection to access the internet, providing safe and filtered access to the internet for students.
The “Staff” wifi is only accessible to members of staff. Through the “Staff” wifi connection, additional services are available through the second Eircom internet connection. This includes access to Youtube.com and other resources that are unavailable on the student connection.
