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	HP ProCurve Networking: Palmer College of Chiropractic—Deploying Wireless Across Three College Campuses
	“We’ve started to do some thinking around 802.11n. While we’re planning to wait until the standard is ratified, it’s great to know that when we’re ready to move forward, it will be easy and cost-effective with Colubris*.” Mike Benedict, Director of Information Technology, Palmer College of Chiropractic

Palmer College of Chiropractic was founded in 1897 by D.D. Palmer, the eminent chiropractor. Palmer is one of the largest chiropractic colleges in the world and has three campuses: the main campus in Davenport, Iowa; the west campus in San Jose, Calif.; and the Florida campus in Port Orange, Fla.

Palmer alumni make up one-third of the approximate 75,000 chiropractors currently in practice worldwide. The school primarily offers Doctor of Chiropractic degrees, but also offers other graduate and undergraduate degrees.

Like most higher-education institutions, Palmer was looking to wirelessly enable its three campuses to meet the demands of its faculty and students, who are extremely mobile. In addition, Palmer wanted to provide full wireless coverage on two of its campuses. Any solution that the college implemented needed to provide reliable coverage and be able to handle bandwidth-intensive applications.

Objective

Palmer Faced Acute Pains with Its Previous Wireless Network
Several years ago, Palmer College of Chiropractic deployed a wireless network that didn’t provide access control, which the Palmer IT staff considered a critical feature.

“Our college is right in the middle of an urban area, with several apartment buildings and businesses in close proximity,” said Mike Benedict, director of information technology of Palmer College of Chiropractic. “We wanted to limit wireless access to faculty and students only, so that our network couldn’t be compromised by outsiders launching malicious attacks.”

Palmer set out to find a new wireless solution that would provide the access control it desired, as well as a seamless wireless network across all three Palmer campuses. Palmer evaluated several solutions, and eventually opted to buy a wireless infrastructure from HP ProCurve.*

Approach

HP ProCurve Provides Palmer with Wireless Backbone
Palmer College is currently using nearly 100 HP ProCurve MultiService Access Points across all three campuses, as well as nine HP ProCurve MultiService Controllers. Palmer has already wirelessly enabled the health centers, student centers, libraries, and campus centers. The college says there will soon be full wireless coverage on its Florida and California campuses, while it plans to make the Davenport campus mostly wireless.

The HP ProCurve MultiService Access Points enforce multi-layer security policies that include strong WLAN authentication and encryption. These security features enable Palmer’s wireless network to be secure, helping the college in implementing various regulatory requirements, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the healthcare industry and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in the education field.

HP ProCurve provides Palmer with the control it requires by letting the college implement different criteria for access. For example, Palmer faculty members are now able to instantly log on to the network, while Palmer students have a log-in page that they need to complete. Palmer can also limit access to the network by outsiders.

In addition, HP ProCurve supports the bandwidth-intensive applications that run over the Palmer network. As a healthcare and teaching institution, Palmer runs several healthcare applications. For example, Palmer uses an electronic medical record (EMR) application at the academic health center on which it stores exam results, patient records, and X-rays. The college needs a reliable wireless network for access to the EMR.

Palmer students and faculty also use a wide variety of other applications, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). “We have not officially implemented VoIP, but we do not limit student and faculty use of voice applications,” said Benedict. “Therefore, we need a reliable wireless network over which these and other bandwidth-intensive applications can run.”

Palmer is primarily using the single-radio HP ProCurve MultiService Access Points throughout its campuses, but it is starting to use dual-radio MultiService Access Points to provide coverage in student housing buildings that do not have Ethernet cabling available for access point connections. The MultiService Access Points can be used to build a high-performance mesh network.

HP ProCurve’s Local Mesh Protocol (LMP) eliminates the need to pull expensive cable, which is important for Palmer College, since it does not want to outfit many of its old buildings with additional cabling. HP ProCurve LMP automates configuration of wireless backhaul links for easy deployment, and it provides high availability by automatically reconfiguring around failures.

HP ProCurve also provides Palmer College with investment protection—as the college looks to expand its wireless network, it can add on access points and controllers incrementally. In addition, as new wireless standards emerge, such as 802.11n, Palmer will not have to undergo a major network overhaul with HP ProCurve, as it would need to do with other wireless LAN providers.

“We’ve started to do some thinking around 802.11n,” said Benedict. “While we’re planning to wait until the standard is ratified, it’s great to know that when we’re ready to move forward, it will be easy and cost-effective with HP ProCurve.”

* The products referred to in this publication were developed and sold by Colubris Networks Inc, which was acquired by HP ProCurve in 2008. References to HP ProCurve herein refer only to Colubris Networks Inc. or those products acquired from Colubris Networks and not the HP ProCurve product line generally.