Bluesocket Adds Florida State, Ohio University & Virginia Tech to Growing Customer List of 400+ Campus Wireless Networks
DENVER, EDUCAUSE EVENT /BURLINGTON, Mass. – October 19, 2004 – Bluesocket, Inc. (www.bluesocket.com), the leading vendor of products that secure and manage WiFi networks, today announced that Florida State University, Ohio University and Virginia Tech, were among the company’s most recent wireless LAN campus deployments in this burgeoning vertical market for WiFi technology.
Today more than 400 universities representing a conservative estimate of some 4 million students, faculty and staff, are using Bluesocket to access the Internet and local campus network services in addition to providing security and management for their wireless campus networks.
Universities Cheer in Favor of Bluesocket
University of Georgia/Athens undertook a rigorous review process in which the IT department looked at authentication systems from a variety of vendors. “Our needs were diverse, since UGA felt it important to have a single source for authenticating both wired and wireless users in the new areas of deployment,” said David Matthews-Morgan, associate director for Network Planning. “We decided that a Bluesocket Wireless Gateway system of multiple authentication servers would best meet the combination of needs for our 33,000 UGA students placed on the network.”
Jinx P. Walton, Director of Computing Services and Systems Development for the University of Pittsburgh, said “Bluesocket was selected following an extensive evaluation of available commercial solutions and custom-developed applications in use at other colleges and universities based on its flexibility, ease of configuration and administration, security, and reporting features.”
“Bluesocket allows for roaming, even when using IPSec,” added Walton. “Automatic failover is also supported. Management and configuration is Web-based, straightforward, and secure. Finally, Bluesocket supports RADIUS user accounting allowing the University to keep user access logs by using the RADIUS accounting services already in place,” said Walton.
The University of Florida’s main campus in Gainesville spreads over 2,000 acres containing approximately 900 buildings. According to Matt Grover, senior network engineer with UF, more than 20,000 distinct wireless devices are in use by 48,000 students and nearly 12,000 faculty and staff. The administration’s main problems centered on authenticating users of the network without causing excessive delays or significant additional network traffic. The solution also needed to be easily deployed, reliable, and affordable.
One of the pleasant side effects of the Bluesocket deployment has been its affordability when compared to other commercial solutions. “Even without the custom feature implementation the Bluesocket solution was cheaper,” said Grover. “All the candidate products were expensive, but Bluesocket offered better features and customization for the money.”
Bluesocket Solution Overview
Bluesocket Wireless Gateways secure and control WiFi networks and provide universal authentication, Secure Mobilityâ„?, policy and bandwidth management through unparalleled interoperability with legacy infrastructure and WLAN standards.
“Bluesocket has implemented real-time monitoring of WiFi users’ data to detect malicious traffic based on the users’ actual behavior without requiring any client-side software,” said Clinton Ringgold of Florida State University. “This enables administrators to automatically block network access to hackers or worm infected users well before traditional signature-based tools have updates available.”
Most recently, Bluesocket announced BlueSecureâ„?, a dedicated wireless LAN monitoring and RF intrusion protection system to protect an organization’s network from wireless-based attacks. BlueSecure includes a server platform that works with the BlueSecure 802.11 b/a/g RF Sensor, providing WLAN administrators with an intuitive management interface to view all user RF activities, neighboring wireless LANs, rogue or unauthorized Access Points and clients, outside threats posed by “war driving” or man-in-the-middle attacks, and advanced correlation to detect these wireless attacks.
About Bluesocket
Founded in 1999, Bluesocket, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of systems to control and secure wireless local area networks (WLANs) for enterprises, institutions and public access venues in 45 countries worldwide. Thousands of Bluesocket Wireless Gateways are deployed by leading enterprises including Harvard University, Honeywell, Universal Health Services, Toyota, Parker Hannifin and others who require policy-based, open-systems solutions to secure, manage, and profit from their WLANs. (www.bluesocket.com)