Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court Improves Security and the Productivity of Lawyers, Jurors and Judges with Wireless LAN and Vo-Fi from Chantry Networks

Waltham, MA―August 9, 2004—Chantry Networks, the leading innovator of routed wireless networking technology, today announced that Bernalillo County New Mexico Metropolitan Court (Metro Court), has implemented Chantry’s BeaconWorks™ wireless local area network (WLAN) throughout its ten story, state-of-the-art facility. Metro Court implemented BeaconWorks to return lost productivity to prospective jurors, increase security, and increase the effectiveness of lawyers and judges to serve the needs of their clients and the general public.

“Our BeaconWorks implementation has helped make Metro Court a shining example of what the future will look like for courthouses around the country,” said Paul Roybal, Chief Information Officer of the State of New Mexico Bernanillo County Metropolitan Court. “Not only have we found a way to strongly mitigate America’s frustration with lost productivity associated with the wait to be selected for jury duty, but we’ve enhanced the building’s security and increased the effectiveness of judges, lawyers and visitors inside the building as well.”

Metro Court is New Mexico’s busiest court, and hosts 16 judges and hundreds of jurors daily. Although the court originally installed a wired network from Cisco Systems, it still faced three primary challenges that it turned to Chantry Networks to solve.

• As with most courts around the country, prospective jurors lost productive work time as they waited to see if they would be selected to serve on a jury. In the past, many citizens had complained that this time away from work was a heavy burden. Metro Court’s BeaconWorks implementation gives prospective jurors the ability to work remotely on laptops and handhelds inside the courthouse, while they wait.

• Cellular phones are prohibited inside the building. Metro Court’s security force relied instead on proprietary 900 megahertz phones for vital communications. Unfortunately, the large amount of concrete and steel in the building created interference that resulted in a large number of dropped calls on these phones. Due to the tight security required by the presence of criminals and highly emotional events inside the building, dropped calls by the security force was an intolerable security risk.

Metro Court overcame this challenge by purchasing NetLink Wireless Telephones from Chantry Networks’ partner SpectraLink. These wireless phones run directly over BeaconWorks’ Internet Protocol, so security personnel, and visiting security personnel (such as local sherrifs) who rely on phones for communications, can use voice-over fidelity (Vo-FI) phones without the risk of dropped calls.

• The growth of Internet and online communications has made Web connectivity important to lawyers’ ability to serve the needs of their clients, and judges' ability to conduct research. Without dedicated offices inside the Courthouse however, these parties lacked convenient, available Internet access. BeaconWorks provides them with highly available Internet access to help ensure they are most effective at their jobs.

Metro Court had several important technical requirements of its WLAN that led to its selection of BeaconWorks. These included:

• Centralized management of the system, rather than at each of the access points throughout the building, to dramatically reduce management and maintenance costs and efforts. BeaconWorks is managed at the BeaconMaster controller, rather than at the BeaconPoint access points, fully meeting this requirement.

• Highly secure and reliable authentication of everyone using the system, regardless of the operating system they were using. BeaconWorks’ Captive Portal feature directs unauthenticated users to a Web page so they can provide log-in information.

• Prioritization of traffic, so that the voice traffic of security personnel using SpectraLink phones, for example, would be prioritized over prospective jurors’ Internet traffic. BeaconWorks virtualization capabilities enable multiple subnets on the same wireless network each with independent policies and prioritization.

• Integration with (and investment protection for) the Court’s investment in its Cisco Systems network infrastructure, a requirement fully met by BeaconWorks.

“We took a close look at the different leading WLAN solutions on the market,” said Roybal. “We decided that only Chantry Networks could best meet each of our technical requirements. Most remarkable is that by using BeaconWorks, we’ve achieved these benefits with a system that fully leverages our existing network infrastructure, and can be managed and configured centrally, ensuring low maintenance costs and efforts.”

Metro Court’s complete BeaconWorks implementation will include two BeaconMaster routers to ensure complete redundancy throughout the building, 65 BeaconPoint access points, and 36 NetLink Wireless Telephones from SpectraLink.

“As the first Layer 3 WLAN, BeaconWorks was engineered to serve as the foundation for highly available voice over wireless phones, tight security, and simple centralized management,” said Peter Vicars, president and CEO of Chantry Networks. “Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court is a tremendously forward thinking implementation that will take advantage of all of these features, and Chantry Networks is proud to help make the Court one of the most innovative in the entire legal system.”

About Chantry Networks
Chantry Networks is the creator of BeaconWorks, an innovative, Layer 3 wireless LAN (WLAN) solution. Offering unprecedented scalability and availability, coupled with unique network virtualization features, BeaconWorks overcomes the obstacles inherent in traditional WLAN systems to provide enterprises and service providers with the first economical and practical solution for building seamless and pervasive wireless networks. Founded in April of 2002, Chantry Networks is headquartered in Boston with offices in Chicago, Denver, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Toronto. Chantry is backed by top-tier investors including Flagship Ventures, Primaxis Technology Ventures, Venture Coaches/ Skypoint Capital and Ventures West. For more information on Chantry Networks visit www.chantrynetworks.com.