Enterasys Networks Inc., the Secure Networks Company(TM), announced that College of the Canyons has selected Enterasys to provide secure connectivity for more than 3,000 wired and wireless devices serving more than 24,000 students, faculty and staff across multiple campus buildings.

Located in Valencia, California, College of the Canyons was recently named the fastest-growing community college in the nation and has expanded offerings to include a Small Business Development Center and High Technology Business Incubator, among other new technology-based course offerings. To support the increased bandwidth and security needs brought on by the expansion, the College made the decision to implement 10GbE network connectivity throughout all campus locations.

“We selected Enterasys solutions to meet our IT goals because they took the time to understand our exact requirements without applying a lot of pressure; and the products were proven to interoperate very well with our existing vendors, including Fortinet and Adtran,” said James Temple, director of Information Technology at College of the Canyons. “Enterasys has also been instrumental in our campus wireless project, which has enabled us to offer students and teachers secure wireless network access in every classroom. Our goal was to have reliable, always-on connectivity for students, faculty and staff, regardless of their location. Enterasys products were simple to implement and worked immediately out of the box. We didn’t have to think about it — it just worked!”

Enterasys’ Matrix® N-Series flow-based switches facilitate the requirements of the expanded curriculum, serving as the core of the College’s network and securely connecting students and faculty to on-line resources such as Blackboard Enterprise servers, course registration and document imaging. Users receive additional protection from hackers with Enterasys’ NAC solution that ensures only known users on our wireless network have access to the College’s servers while quarantining suspicious network connectivity attempts. Temple and his staff of four network support personnel are able to manage the entire network using Enterasys’ NetSight® Management Suite to ensure they can proactively address problems before a student or instructor calls the helpdesk.

Temple says that Enterasys’ unmatched service and support have proved to be just as valuable as the products themselves. “I got a call one Saturday that half our network was down,” he recalled. “I resigned myself to the fact that we would probably have to wait until Monday to get it resolved. An Enterasys support professional showed up onsite to help, no questions asked, and within three hours the network was up and running again. There was no finger-pointing or blame games like some of the other vendors play. In today’s education world, nothing works without the network. Enterasys understands this, and goes above and beyond to make sure our network is running reliably at top performance.”