In our residential halls we've deployed dual-radio 802.11n AP's at a level where we average no more than 10 people per AP. Moving forward, our new residential halls will move to an AP per suite, pushing the average to no more than about 6. At our peak demand per day, our campus client-per-AP average is about 5.5. We're seeing peak bandwidth use on Wireless in range of 400Mbps downstream and 100Mbs upstream. Since 2003, we've offered "Gigabit to the Pillow," but with the advent of the WiFi coverage, use of the wired ports is now minimal. In fact, when I mentioned to a first-year that she had the option of using a wired ethernet port, she said "What's that?" Jeff
>>> On Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 3:13 PM, in message >>> <4c43d94c-bb4e-45cf-a2bd-3e6081e38...@utk.edu>, "Hanset, Philippe C" >>> <phan...@utk.edu> wrote: Ron, Frank implemented his reply-to on his own. There is nothing that we can do to prevent that I believe. (Frank, would you please change that setting) About the article, we are facing the same... people want a "home" experience in their dorms, and the expectations are insane. This said, with the amount of devices without a wired ethernet capability, it's hard to tell users to go back to a cable! I have just proposed a design at UTK that would have each Wi-Fi AP shared by 8 people on average in the dorms, and Wired "on demand". (e.g. $40 per semester for an activation) The cables and switches are there, but completely underused (mostly used because our initial Wi-Fi was built as a complement). Wireless only in the dorms is a great thing in term of capacity planning. You don't have sleeping ethernet ports anymore. Our switches are going on 8-9 years, so instead of replacing them we might just have switches for wireless with a little extra capacity for "wired on demand". Providing wireless coverage and capacity for 8 people per AP and changing only switches needed for wireless will have a cost very similar to replacing all current switches (we plan to locate APs in bedrooms, no extra wiring cost!). We have heard of many successful stories of wireless only dorms on this list, we certainly hope to share it. We also plan to have one wireless subnet per dorm to support MDNS (Bonjour etc...). Bring your Apple TVs and Airplays kids... (maybe some rate limiting ;-) Best, Philippe Univ. of TN, Knoxville On Nov 10, 2011, at 1:07 PM, Parker, Ron wrote: > It looks like the reply-to on the list isn't working right or something. I > posted a witty rejoinder to this message and it went only to the original > poster rather than the list. Frank has probably implemented an e-mail sender > filter as a result. Perhaps our gracious list admin could check and see if > I'm mistaken? > > I couldn't tell how much of what happened at Skidmore was a Time Warner > problem versus other issues. There seem to be a lot of things all going on at > the same time. I've heard my colleagues at other colleges talk about > challenges with outsourcing residence hall networking. One of them had what > sounds like a similar experience with a virus outbreak at the beginning of > this semester. Unfortunately, it was the college IT staff running around > fixing things and taking the blame rather than the vendor. > > Since this is the wireless list, I'll focus on the wireless issues. If you > ask me, this is the important quote: "'The original design of the wireless > system in the residence halls was to provide supplemental coverage to the > wired network in your rooms," said Sipher'" So a student is sitting there > with an unused 100 meg or gig wired port that would probably work fine but > the Skidmore folks are being sent running around with their hair on fire > because the outsourced wireless is overloaded. I just think user expectations > of wireless are unrealistic and we in IT are probably not doing a good job of > correcting that. I routinely tell people here to use a wired connection if > what they are doing is important. This is in spite of the fact that we have a > honking new wireless system with the latest and greatest magic available. > > I am definitely in the club of "been there done that" along with the folks at > Skidmore. Sounds like they are trying to do a good job of communicating about > the situation and I've always found that goes a long way towards making > everyone happier. There is a lot of good information in that article. > > -- > Ron Parker, Director of Information Technology, Brazosport College > Voice: (979) 230-3480 FAX: (979) 230-3111 > http://www.brazosport.edu > > This e-mail sent from my non-mobile, 64-bit, quad core, Windows 7 > workstation. > > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv >> [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Frank Bulk >> Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2011 9:02 AM >> To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU >> Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] College deals with wireless issues >> >> http://www.skidmorenews.com/news/information-technology-department-addresses >> -wireless-issues-1.2691856#.TrvkfkMUqdA >> >> This article has some details but doesn't make it very clear if all the >> problems have been DNS or otherwise, but I thought there might be some >> people on this list who find this news article interesting. >> >> I don't think Skidmore is on this list, as I don't meant to embarrass >> anyone. We've all "been there" in one circumstance or another. >> >> Frank >> >> ********** >> 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/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
