Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Very high number of wireless devices returning from break
If you saw Apple's earning's they sold a ton over the holidays. It wouldn't be surprising to see a significant increase in wifi devices on higher ed campuses. /rf On Jan 26, 2012, at 11:09 AM, Wright, Don donald_wri...@brown.edu wrote: All, It seems an alarmingly high number of wireless devices have returned to our campus this week. After at least of year of steadily increasing numbers, we are now seeing a roughly 40% increase since last December. At first I didn't believe what I was seeing and opened a case with the vendor to confirm reporting was accurate. Tied into this, we upgraded by a major version earlier this month and I thought this could be related. Apparently not the case, everything we've looked at tells us that the numbers are accurate. I'm still looking a stats, but haven't been able to come up with anything yet. Is anyone else seeing this magnitude of increase in devices over winter break ? Don Wright Brown University ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Disappointing numbers of 5ghz clients
Is anyone using the various band steering methods to nudge clients over to the 5ghz band? On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Brian Helman bhel...@salemstate.eduwrote: I think the newer Macs and iOS devices are dual band. The problem is you can’t tell them which band to use, so they connect to the strongest signal. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean the “better” signal. ** ** -Brian ** ** *From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] *On Behalf Of *Coehoorn, Joel *Sent:* Sunday, September 25, 2011 10:11 AM *To:* WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU *Subject:* Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Disappointing numbers of 5ghz clients ** ** There was another thread on this same listserv -a month or two back basically complaining about the lack of consumer laptops with 5ghz radios. When your average student or parent goes to buy a laptop for college, pretty much everything they see is still 2.4Ghz. Even if they're looking for 5Ghz (and few do), most laptops just advertise for b/g/n and don't otherwise tell you what spectrum it will use. The result is exactly what you're seeing: the cleaner 5Ghz band is barely used, and students complain about throughput on 2.4Ghz. Hopefully by next year's buying season we're seeing more 5Ghz laptops in the market, but even then it will take a while before your upperclassmen have the technology. Joel Coehoorn IT Director 402.363.5603 On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Jennifer Francis Wilson jfwils...@uclan.ac.uk wrote: Anyone happy with the numbers of 5ghz clients connecting to their networks, compared to 2.4ghz clients? I'm only seeing around 25% of clients on 5ghz, despite having a decent density of dual radio 2.4/5ghz APs with band select switched on. A reasonable percentage of the 5ghz clients are from laptops we loan out which we know connect to 5ghz most of the time. Most clients seem to either not be 5ghz capable or their wireless NICs/drivers aren't choosing the 5ghz signal. (we have 802.11n on both 2.4 and 5ghz, with 20mhz channels on 5ghz and use the same ssids on both bands) Jen. ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ** ** ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ** ** ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. -- /rf ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Restrict Student Access on Fac/Staff Wlan
You can also watch for the SSID attribute in the access-request and have your Radius server deny access if the students are connecting to the wrong SSID. Typically I see people using a single SSID with vlan assignment based on group attribute and policy. On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 4:59 PM, Mike King m...@mpking.com wrote: Someone asked the exact same question on the FreeRadius mailing list 2 weeks ago.. http://lists.freeradius.org/mailman/htdig/freeradius-users/2011-January/msg00336.html Happy reading. I use Microsoft's NPS, and it was much easier to do this. Granted, I'm only supporting around 200 Simultaneous users. On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Taillon II, Kendall ktail...@wesleyan.edu wrote: We currently have a single SSID/Wlan for student, faculty and staff members. We have added a second SSID and wlan along with a different vlan and would like to split off the students to this new segment. Two SSID’s seems to work fine except, how do we keep the students from connecting to the fac/staff SSID? The other setup would be to have a single SSID and have the Radius server dictate the correct vlan from the grouping. Cisco NAC 4.8 FreeRadius Ken Taillon Network Administrator Wesleyan University Middletown, CT 860-685-5657 ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. -- /rf ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
K-12 listserv?
Is anyone aware of a listserv similar to the WLAN Educause group which focuses on the K-12 area? Thanks in advance for any help. -- /rf ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Aruba vs HP vs Meraki
It should also be noted that not all controller in the cloud solutions are the same. The key difference is the control plane. While the data plane is distributed and the management plane is centralized the control plane will be handled differently depending on the vendor. If the control plane is cloud based then the APs are dependent on the WAN link and cloud availability in order to maintain dynamic intelligence (and all of the features that are tied to the control plane - roaming, RF mgmt, etc..). If the control plane is also distributed then the APs will maintain their intelligence when they cannot talk to the cloud. Make sure the vendor explains all of the features which are tied to the control plane before deployment. /rf On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Kevin Hess kh...@westmont.edu wrote: Hi Ethan, et al, I am new to the list but noticed this discussion and thought I might offer my two cents. I work at Westmont College, a liberal arts college in the Santa Barbara area. We evaluated Aruba, Cisco and Meraki last summer. We had a previous Aruba installation, running for several years, and with moderate success. What we found was that Meraki's model was made extremely flexible and simple by virtue of having no onsite controller. Being in the cloud, the controller itself was accessible by anyone we chose to allow access to it, not just whoever had knowledge of the specific command structure of the onsite controller, as was the case with the Aruba installation. Because of that flexibility, I or any of my network staff can log on from anywhere, be it a cafe, home or iPhone. Additionally, I can easily log into my local AP, wherever I am on campus, and get local information about that AP. Being a smallish shop, we used a local integrator, Novacoast, to work with us on some reengineering and deployment. I only mention that because before we approached them, NC had never even heard of Meraki. Within a few weeks they were fully credentialed and ready to go. That I almost entirely attribute to how easy Meraki is to deploy, though certainly NC were great. We spent some time working through our preferred configuration, some of which was a logical lift from the Aruba and some entirely new. We had around 270 Aruba ABG units (AP61s I think...) that were not upgradeable to N and as I mentioned the controller management was challenging. Only our Network Manager had access and knowledge enough to manage the unit. We replaced with nearly the same number of Merakis but gained full coverage around campus (indoor and out), N, dual and triband radios and an elegance in operation that has continued. With the Meraki setup even our CIO logs on and can easily run usage reports, drill down to specific APs, clients, time frames etc. Whenever Meraki enables a new feature, of which there have been several, they are applied to the cloud controller and have no effect to the local APs (=no down time). There have been a couple firmware updates but those are applied intelligently so that there is minimal downtime in the middle of the night and the update is applied in batches so we don't have a campus of dark APs during the upgrade. We haven't had a single unit fail. The long and short is that we have barely thought about the system since putting it in. We are in it all the time to check usage (...the ongoing struggle to have enough bandwidth etc etc), troubleshoot client issues (typically client misconfiguration by user), and see what new features have been added. But I don't worry about it. Ever. That may not be a standard TCO argument but for my money it's a big one. Cheers Kevin __ Kevin J. Hess '98 Senior Director Information Technology Westmont College 805.565.6154 kh...@westmont.edu ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. -- /rf ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Blocking iPhones
Blocking technology usually just creates more problems than it solves. Imagine an emergency on campus and the fallout from students being unable to use their cell phones. This is a job for administrators to do what they do best. On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 2:47 PM, heath.barnhart heath.barnh...@washburn.edu wrote: I'm going to have to go with Jethro on this one. When I was in class generally you were warned at the beginning of the semester. Following that, a call during usually resulted in either being asked to leave or being humiliated by the professor, or both. Also Neil brings up another point in a later post, what's to keep them from just jumping on a regular 3G network. I think this should be a non-technical issue. A technical response is really a waste of time. Heath Jethro R Binks wrote: On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Emerson Parker wrote: The requests I'm seeing is from teachers who don't what people on their phones in class. Why are you singling out iPhones? This sounds like yet another case of technology being asked to provide a solution to a social or political problem. And that is generally a recipe if not for disaster, then bad feeling. How about, and here's me just thinking completely off the top of my head for the first idea that comes to mind... the teacher asks people to turn their phones off? If the request is regularly ignored, then local rules with defined sanctions should be implemented and enforced. Jethro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jethro R Binks Computing Officer, IT Services, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. -- Heath Barnhart Asst. Systems and Networking Admin Information Systems and Services Washburn University Topeka, KS 66621 ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. -- /rf ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Aerohive 340AP
Valid questions. Perhaps they should follow a few strategic thoughts. o What does my network look like now? (Collapsed or distributed layer 3. Vlans per school, per building, per floor, etc.) o What will my network look like in 3 years? o Do you want vlans to exist in your core? o Which WLAN vendor provides enough knobs for me to architect the optimal solution? Given the adoption of .1X it could be argued that wireless users no longer need to be logically segmented from wired users on my trusted network. Access Points simply extend the access layer to a new media. I should have the option to tunnel certain networks to a particular end point. Layer 3 roaming can be optimized through network logic design and software. These should not be mutually exclusive. Also, in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I am employed by a promising local WLAN vendor. I monitor but rarely post to this list. However it would be nice to discuss these issues as well as other operational/architecture topics in a vendor neutral environment. I'd be happy to host a NANOG type list if there is interest. /rf On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Zeller, Tom S zel...@indiana.edu wrote: In a recent discussion here we produced at least two issues with decentralized architecture. #1. Mobility. One of the main attractions of the controller-based architecture (CBA) in the first place was to improve the experience for hand-held devices which don’t hibernate between locations. The device can’t know that it has changed subnets when it roams. So it either breaks or there is tunneling of some sort. It’s not clear which approach, centralized or decentralized, has the more difficult scaling issue once mobile tunneling is taken into account. #2. IP space use. With centralized you create a pool of X number of subnets with some headroom. Quite efficient. With distributed, you first have to choose to have wireless traffic on the building vlan or not. If you put it on the building vlan wireless users are behind any existing departmental firewall or ACL. If that’s unacceptable you have to create a new vlan in each building and allocate IP space for each, with headroom, which is a much less efficient use of IP space. Tom Zeller Indiana University ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. -- /rf ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
