As part of a major capital investment into the construction of new campuses, the colletook the opportunity to deliver a better, more connected student experience by providing wireless access across all of its campuses.
With many of todays' students using mobile devices in their studies, it became fundamentally important to ensure they were able to use their devices on campus without impacting the regular day to day operations of the college. To ensure that each student has a good experience it was essential that students could move around the facilities without disconnecting from the network. It was also essential that enough bandwidth was provided to each student so that the network appeared responsive.
The initial implementation of the network proved to be a success with few issues. After a few months, the college began experiencing problems with the wireless network that brought it down to a halt. Upon reviewing the network, there appeared to be a device flooding the network. Unlike cabled network, pinpointing the location of a wireless device was a bit more problematic. To find the source of the problem, we brought in a spectrum analyzer to pinpoint the exact location of the offending device and disable it.
Unlike corporate computers, students are used to accessing personal services such as iTunes, Youtube and Netflix. To ensure that each student did not consume all of the available bandwidth we had to implement bandwidth limitations on the network as well as application prioritization to ensure that there was always enough bandwidth available to deliver services.
We were very impressed with the wireless solution that Lexcom provided. The implementation of the cross campus wireless network resulted in much improved wireless coverage for students and faculty members that aligned well with our new campus.