In 2015, the AUCA Board of Directors decided to upgrade the existing equipment every five years. The main task facing the IT specialists was to replace outdated equipment with modern equipment to improve the performance of the local network.

Before the modernization began, AUCA users periodically experienced network outages. During video conferences with lecturers from abroad, the signal would sometimes drop out, connections would be interrupted, and users’ devices did not always switch seamlessly from one access point to another. “Curious” students would occasionally attempt to test the university’s information security system by launching man-in-the-middle attacks.

The access points previously in use were designed to handle 20 - 25 simultaneous connections each - these resources were insufficient for the university. Following successful testing during the pilot project, the university proceeded to purchase Cisco Aironet 2800 access points, which are designed to handle 200 active connections. This represents a nearly 10-fold increase compared to the previous equipment.

A Cisco 5508 controller was installed to provide centralized management of the access points. This made it possible to segment users and grant them network access based on their profiles. Today, just three network administrators manage AUCA’s 110 access points, even though the university is an enterprise-class facility.