Wireless Campus

Stone Barns Center
www.stonebarnscenter.org

Solutions

• 10X Cisco WAPs
• Directional 5GHz Antennae
• Cisco Catalyst POE Switch
• Apple Airport Extreme (for public network)

See our other Case Studies:
..............................................

DIGO:Marketing and Advertising
EARNEST SEWN: Fashion
STONE BARNS: Education and Agriculture

Company Profile
Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture is a farm, a kitchen, a classroom–an exhibit, a laboratory, a campus. The mission of this
unique, nonprofit, member-driven collaboration is to celebrate, teach
and advance community-based food production and enjoyment, from
farm to classroom to table.

Business Challenge
As the staff travels around the 80 acres of open rolling fields and half
a dozen distinct prewar stone buildings, they must be able to maintain
a connection to the local network, to continue working with their various systems, including email, custom databases and environmental
agricultural status monitoring systems. As there are also frequent
visitors on the grounds, there also needs to be a second network for
guests- one that hides the Stone Barns network’s secrets from prying
eyes.

Technical Challenge:
Its 80 acres! That’s a challenge!

Brief:
Positioning of the antenna was a crucial step in the process. Working with the architects and our tech team, we determined the placement of each antenna very carefully to ensure that the network coverage was complete for each of the Stone Barns buildings on the main grounds. A power-over-ethernet-Catalyst switch reduced the cabling needs tremendously and eliminated the need for expensive electrical wiring in hard-to-reach places. To link up the outbuildings, we used a combination of fiber optic lines and the Cisco Directional Antennae to maintain connectivity. Rolling out the configuration of the wireless access points was a snap, as Cisco’s firmware distribution makes configuration of a roof-mounted WAP possible via remote.

For the public network (open to guests and visitors), we used Apple’s Airports, as they are low cost, esthetically attractive and easy to hide.