Universities, Enterprises Get up to Speed with 802.11n, But Deployment Challenges Remain

Gone are the days when incoming college students didn’t assume super-fast wireless Internet awaited them the moment their parents waved goodbye.

 

And now, with an unprecedented demand for - and availability of- bandwidth-hungry applications, a growing number of schools spent the lazy days of summer upgrading their existing Wi-Fi networks to 802.11n, which becomes the official Wi-Fi Alliance (News - Alert)-approved networking standard in mid-September when the I-EEE ratifies and publishes the final specification.  

As universities are allocating millions of dollars to upgrade their networks, it may not be long before 802.11n is adopted by all.  

 

“We’re seeing a rapid uptake of 802.11n among schools in response to increased funding for technology improvements,” said Chris Kozup, senior manager for mobility solutions at networking company Cisco (News - Alert), a major proponent of the technology.

 

“With the influx of stimulus funds and e-rate programs, more schools are implementing Wi-Fi. Because schools have longer refresh cycles for technology, schools that are implementing Wi-Fi are looking long-term and choosing to deploy 802.11n.”

 

Largely driven by student, staff and faculty demand for broadband, the 802.11n standard’s deployment comes just in time, as the use of high-bandwidth applications increases, said Richard Siedzik, director of computer and telecommunications services for Bryant University, whose 802.11n network for the 3,700-student college was just completed this summer.

 

“The biggest application in demand right now is video. Whether you’re talking about video on the ‘net or class action that’s been put up on a video server, they want it delivered wirelessly,” Siedzik told TMCnet. “The reason we did it is that we want to enable more and more wireless activities. With an ‘n’ radio, we can have denser associations, so more users can connect to access points, with better throughput.”

 

The growing use of dual-mode handsets and smartphones is another key driver for faster networks, as students want the same rich content, such as video, on mobile devices.

 

“We certainly had to meet the demand of the campus, and I think we’ve done that,” said Don McLaughlin, director of telecommunications operations, administrative computing and telecommunications at University of California, San Diego, which spent between $2.2 and $2.3 million to implement 802.11n at its 28,500-student campus. “When they’re on campus in classrooms or in conference rooms, they’ll have access to the high-speed wireless network, and there are more devices these days that take advantage of wireless network.”

 

But deploying 802.11n in schools didn’t happen without a few hurdles.

 

Although Bryant University didn’t have any trouble forking over the $250,000 it cost to upgrade its small campus to 802.11n, Siedzik and his IT colleagues had to take into account the school’s power supply and how to spread out the power as it swapped out older equipment.

 

 “I’d say power was the biggest obstacle,” Siedzik told TMCnet. “We had to do some changes in switching, and changes in how we actually spread out the power over Ethernet devices across our switch stacks because of the power they consumed. There’s only a limited amount of that and 802.11n devices draw more power.”

 

And though the “one-to-one swap out” with existing access points went much more smoothly than expected, at University of California, San Diego, funding is an issue. The school’s dormitories were left out of the 802.11n upgrade. “We’re working on the dorms,” McLaughlin told TMCnet. “We would like to see the housing department come up with the funding so we can upgrade the wireless network sooner, rather than later.”