Dartmouth College Chooses Mist for Campus-Wide, AI-Driven Wi-Fi

Cloud-Managed Wlan Delivers Better Student/Teacher Experiences; Integrates with Juniper Networks’ Access Switches to Enable AI for IT

Mist, a pioneer in self-learning networks powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), announced that Dartmouth College, one of the world’s top ranking academic institutions and a member of the prestigious Ivy League, has selected Mist’s Learning Wireless LAN (WLAN) for campus-wide Wi-Fi. By switching to Mist, Dartmouth is leading a trend amongst higher-ed institutions to move away from legacy on-premises WLAN controllers based on monolithic software architectures to a modern, cloud-based, AI-driven Wi-Fi solution based on microservices. This enables better mobile experiences for students, researchers and staff while lowering the cost of wireless network deployment and operations.

Read More: Interview with Jeffrey Kofman, CEO and Founder at Trint

With Mist’s AI-driven WLAN, students, teachers and guests at Dartmouth are realizing fast and reliable mobile connectivity to key resources across campus, while also allowing students to securely share personalized devices like Apple TV and Chromecast devices. In addition, the school can now incorporate more engaging content into lesson plans using wireless technology. The Mist Learning WLAN also delivers the following benefits to Dartmouth’s IT department:

• AI-driven insight maximizes network uptime and optimizes resources.
• Predictive analytics avoid network problems before they arise.
• Unique visibility into the user experience assures network performance for Wi-Fi users.
• Mist’s microservices cloud delivers agility and improved manageability while enabling the elimination of expensive, monolithic on-premises WLAN controllers.
• Mist’s patented virtual Bluetooth LE™ delivers personalized location, such as wayfinding for self-guided campus tours and proximity notifications.

“Our students are very demanding when it comes to the on-campus network,” said Mitch Davis,­­­ vice president and CIO at Dartmouth College. “Mist provides unique features that let us satisfy the most stringent wireless requirements, such as customizable Wi-Fi service levels, event correlation for rapid root cause analysis and a virtual network assistant that makes troubleshooting fast and easy for our team. In addition, Mist enables us to transition our Wi-Fi operations to the cloud, ­delivering new levels of scalability and agility that we could not achieve with our previous controller-based WLAN architecture.”

Read More: The Top 5 “Recipes” That Give AI Projects a Higher Likelihood of Success

Mist also recently announced a partnership with Juniper Networks to extend the power of AI across the entire network stack – from the wireless network, across the wired edge and into the core. By integrating the Mist Learning WLAN with Juniper’s EX Series Ethernet Switches,Dartmouth gains rich insights into wired and wireless network performance all in one place. In addition, the joint AI for IT solution incorporates advanced artificial intelligence to remediate issues across the wired and wireless network proactively, before they impact users. This enables users to experience consistent levels of performance and reliability regardless of how and where they connect.

“The Mist and Juniper partnership was a key enabler for us as we looked to update the network infrastructure to power a modern learning environment that will accelerate Dartmouth into the future,” said Davis. “The combined solution delivers excellent visibility into the whole wired/wireless stack and uniquely leverages AI for proactive automation, making the combined solution a perfect fit for our campus environment.”

“Juniper is thrilled to work alongside Mist to power Dartmouth College’s new AI-driven network, driving fast and reliable connectivity to its students, staff and campus visitors,” said Michael Bushong, vice president of enterprise and cloud marketing at Juniper Networks. “With Mist’s Learning WLAN and Juniper’s switches, our higher education customers are able to deliver an exceptional educational experience, enabling students to perform cutting edge research.”

Read More:  Fluor Uses IBM Watson to Deliver Predictive Analytics Capability for Megaprojects