ACADEMIA

Ruckus Wireless announced that Club Magnolia, a five-star private club for attendees of the world-renowned Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, has selected its Smart Wi-Fi products and technology to bring high-capacity, high-performance Wi-Fi to its upscale clientele.

With multiple smartphones and tablets being used at the club by attendees, Club Magnolia needed a more reliable Wi-Fi network to support the sheer density of users, as well as the performance requirements expected by corporate patrons. With the help of its integration partner, BluePrint RF, the private club turned to Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi.

"Club Magnolia is excited to have Ruckus Wireless on board as one of our premier 2012 Masters sponsors and we feel that they can truly provide a 'best in breed' solution to our Fortune 100 and 500 corporate patrons, while they are attending the Masters," said Club Magnolia owner Robbi Raitt.

Before deploying Ruckus' enterprise-class system, Club Magnolia was using a few consumer-grade Linksys Wi-Fi access points (APs), which were not capable of supporting the bandwidth requirements from the hundreds of smartphones and other devices. Each Linksys AP was limited to 10 concurrent users, which put severe limitations on the Club's ability to support the increasing wireless needs of guests. Club Magnolia also needed a Wi-Fi system that would allow them to stream audio to indoor and outdoor bars, along with IP-based high-definition video to the club's 20 televisions.

To cover the club's six rooms, as well as outdoor areas, Club Magnolia was provided four ZoneFlex 7363 dual-band 802.11n indoor Smart Wi-Fi APs by Blueprint RF, which connect to a 10 Mbps fiber backhaul link. The Wi-Fi network is managed by Blueprint RF through its own management system, with both onsite support and remote technicians. With Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi deployed at Club Magnolia, the facility now offers much higher throughput and stronger Wi-Fi signal strength throughout the premises.

"A world-class event like the Masters Tournament really puts the spotlight on the need for highly reliable, high-capacity Wi-Fi, to give attendees the 'always-connected' experience they expect," said Rob Mustarde, vice president of marketing for Ruckus Wireless. "Addressing the capacity and interference challenges that come with so many devices and applications accessing a network are experienced by mobile operators, and public and private venue operators alike. Smart Wi-Fi is uniquely capable of addressing these issues like no other Wi-Fi solution on the market today."

"We're excited to be part of this event-specific deployment," said James Tubo, COO of Blueprint RF. "With such a small window of time and the incredible density of users it is a great opportunity to prove the capabilities of the Ruckus hardware."

Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi is designed to uniquely overcome the physical and technical challenges of bringing high-performance Internet access to indoor and outdoor environments with high-capacity, high-performance coverage requirements. Each ZoneFlex AP is designed with a patented adaptive antenna array that extends signal strength and automatically adapts to changes in the environment that otherwise degrade performance. By focusing and directing Wi-Fi signals over the best signal path, the ZoneFlex system is the only one on the market that can automatically avoid interference to ensure consistent performance and high throughput.