Case Studies
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Charleston Southern University Deploys First Ever All Wireless Live Video and Audio Streaming of NCAA Events Using Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays
Charleston Southern University (CSU) was founded in 1964 and is one of South Carolina’s largest, accredited, independent universities. With over 3,000 students, the university’s mission is promoting academic excellence in a Christian environment to all faiths. Students across the campus participate in a variety of activities including academic clubs, service organizations, intramural athletics and campus ministries. The university offers intercollegiate athletics for both men and women, competing in the NCAA Division I Big South Conference. Charleston Southern fields teams in across the sports spectrum including basketball, baseball, softball, women's soccer and Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA) football.
As the first all wireless campus in South Carolina, Charleston Southern University prides itself on applying the latest technology to solve “real world” problems while enhancing student life on its sprawling 300-acre campus. As the students enjoy a well-rounded and successful sports program, the IT staff was tasked to bring live broadcasts (video and audio) of NCAA women’s events occurring at the campus’s soccer and softball fields in part to further enhance the sporting program but to also satisfy Title IX requirements. While the requirement was straight forward, the solution was not clear as the University’s current wireless network was not capable of supporting video broadcasts and laying a fiber backhaul across the campus was not cost effective
Outdoor Video Streaming – Quick and Easy
With the women’s soccer and softball fields over 1,300 feet from the Learning Center, enabling a live video feed was beyond the capabilities of the current Wi-Fi infrastructure as it could not provide the range or the bandwidth needed to support video streaming. Trenching a fiber backhaul across 
the newly installed fields was not only costly ($38,000), but disruptive to the athletic teams.
The right solution presented itself in the form of Xirrus’ Wi-Fi Array. The Wi-Fi Arrays provided double the range and over four times the bandwidth of the current Wi-Fi Access Points installed throughout the campus. A Xirrus Wi-Fi network was used to wirelessly connect the Learning Center to the soccer and softball fields.
From there, video cameras provide live video and audio feeds of the athletic events becoming the first deployment of wireless technology to satisfy live video and audio streaming for an NCAA Big South Conference sports venue.
The following graphic shows a map of the university, Wi-Fi connectivity was provided from the highlighted Athletic fields to the Learning Center building labeled below as #18.
“This deployment sets precedence for other schools who face the same requirements for remote locations as they now have a networking option other than a fiber solution,” said Rusty Bruns, Chief Information Officer at Charleston Southern University. “Using the Wi-Fi Arrays provided substantial cost savings to direct boring and laying in or blowing fiber – the Xirrus solution delivered the required range and bandwidth while costing 70% less than a wired alternative.” Time and cost considerations played key roles in the decision making process, Xirrus provided a solution that was quick to install using and easy to deploy.
The Xirrus Advantage
The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array was designed to provide exceptional range and bandwidth to cover large areas and run new applications like video. With its large number of Integrated Access Points, Gigabit Switch and sectored antenna system, the Wi-Fi Array can handle over 1,000 simultaneous users provisioning nearly a Gigabit of Wi-Fi bandwidth.
