Our experience matches that of a lot of other schools. Initially, for budget 
reasons, a few buildings got APs in the hallways, but that's a suboptimal RF 
design and will not work properly, and we quickly moved away from that and 
instead tackled the hassles of trying to get APs into rooms and suites. This 
also made for natural small cells, which are pretty important. Things like 
NetFlix and Hulu are popular uses of the network, and when streamed over 
wireless, you have to start limiting users per AP.

The additional benefit of putting the APs in non-public areas to us as well was 
accountability, so that if damage were to occur, housing could bill the 
residents. Luckily, we also have not seen notable loss or damage. We use Cisco 
APs and small locks to affix them to their brackets, but no protective 
coverings beyond that. The Cisco brackets also make the cables inaccessible, so 
we haven't dealt with students unplugging anything*. We and our residence staff 
were concerned about vandalism initially, but everyone has been pleasantly 
surprised. In some of our new buildings each suite has a small mechanical 
closet for water heaters etc. and that turned out to be a good place for the 
AP, as it's reachable from the hallway and not reachable by the residents, but 
still basically in the suite. If there's new construction or renovation, 
doesn't hurt to have a chat with the architect or engineer to see if they have 
any ideas.

The biggest complaint we have received regarding the access points in rooms was 
that the blinking light bothered residents, so in the residence halls we've 
turned off the LED indicators.

Also, 5 GHz is a must. There's no way to get 2.4 GHz to work reliably, the lack 
of channels for tiling and microwaves, game controllers and other endless 
amounts of 2.4 GHz devices see to that, and we strongly encourage students to 
get dual-band cards or systems.

In buildings where we have blanket wireless coverage, the use of wired 
connections by residents has almost completely vanished even when there's a hot 
and ready jack right in their room, so there's an obvious strong preference of 
wireless among the student population. This can maybe be translated into a cost 
savings to justify the Wifi install.

--
Toivo Voll
Network Engineer
Information Technology Communications
University of South Florida

*In some of our older classrooms where we rigged wireless using existing jacks 
that were accessible, we repeatedly had to go and plug them back in because 
people would ignore any amount of "don't unplug / don't touch" signage or 
common sense. Based on that experience, if your jacks / AP jacks are 
accessible, I'd certainly recommend some kind of enclosure that keeps 
enterprising self-help fingers off them.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv
> [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of David
> Robertson
> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 8:37 AM
> To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
> Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Wireless in Residence Halls
> 
> We are looking at how we install wireless in our Residence Halls for
> coverage.  Currently we only place access points in the hallways, but
> are looking at moving them into the rooms for better coverage. We were
> wondering if anyone else has put the access points in the rooms and if
> they have seen a reduction in wireless complaint or if there have been
> issues with students playing with or disconnecting the access points.
> 
> David R.
> 
> --
> David Robertson
> Service Delivery Manager
> Network Engineering Technology
> George Mason University
> Voice: 703-993-2443
> Fax: 703-993-3505
> 
> **********
> Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent
> Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.

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