Thanks to their love affair with new technology, college students are helping to drive adoption of 802.11n on campus, a new report
found.
According to the
Meraki Higher Education Wireless Census, nearly twice as many devices surveyed on campus are 802.11n capable, compared to off-campus. The findings also revealed that of the 10,000 devices surveyed, 36 percent of on-campus devices were 802.11n capable, compared to 21 percent of off-campus devices.
Windows XP/Vista remained the top operating system for on- and off-campus users, as pictured below. About 59 percent of devices on-campus and 64 percent of devices off-campus are Windows based, the report found, which also surveyed students’ bandwidth usage and use patterns. Meanwhile, Mac OS X makes up a growing market share for on-campus users at 24 percent, compared to 14 percent of off-campus users, the report said.
What’s more, the
iPhone is becoming a popular device both on- and off-campus accounting for 15% of all wireless devices.
"Students at higher education institutions help us predict the future of wireless adoption and show us where the market is headed," said Sanjit Biswas (
News -
Alert), CEO and co-founder of Meraki, in a statement "Colleges have always been on the cutting edge of technology. Younger students are using wireless in ways that the general public just isn't yet. When you look at the amount bandwidth consumed at higher education institutions, having a high performance and reliable wireless network is imperative."
College students are greater consumer of bandwidth, Merkai said. According to the census, students consume 3.3 times as much bandwidth per device than typical WiFi users. Students often stream video at a sustained 1 Mbit to 2Mbit per sec rate from Hulu (
News -
Alert) and YouTube during peak times. In all, video makes up 70 percent to 80 percent of all bandwidth traffic on-campus, the report said.
Another growth area on-campus is mobility. Using Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif. as a test site, Merkai found that 60 percent of all devices on-campus connect to the wireless network from 10 or more locations. There, students have an average of 1.54 devices each, and connect to the wireless network a minimum of 20 days per month, the company said.
Edited by
Amy Tierney
By