Meeting High Speed Wi-Fi Needs in Difficult Dorm Environments ANGELO D. SANTABARBARA DIRECTOR NETWORKS & SYSTEMS

Problem  Dorms often built with “Hotel plans” with solid concrete rooms, lots of metal, and dense population  Traditional AP deployment in hallways is not sufficient to provide reliable high speed access to all students (4+ devices per student common)  High AP cost, controller cost, and license cost  AP’s designed for wide coverage not meeting the needs of our students  Automatic wireless configuration designed for wide coverage instead of performance that often worsens the problem by increasing signal strength only to cause more RF interference and collisions which in turn increase retransmits  Strong wireless signals that do nothing to match power saving radios in notebooks, phones, etc. due to hidden node problems  Survey’s time consuming and highly affected by number of users, devices, time of day, etc.  Sticky clients and loose clients unpredictable as some clients rarely drop the further AP down the hall while others jump from AP to AP continuously

Solution  Looked for what hotel’s were doing in similar environments  Ruckus one of the leading hospitability wireless solutions  Low cost, highly manageable ac AP’s designed for in room installation, powered by PoE, no loss of in room wired ports (Actually adds 4 ports per room)  Simple and low cost VM based controllers  AP per room will meet local client requirements first and minimize RF interference amongst AP’s and devices  Room first design where pedestrian traffic can use roaming wireless but is not the primary wireless user  Capacity-driven Channel Assignment to optimize channel selection, but not constantly change it.  Adaptive antenna technology and best-path-selection algorithms to beam form and direct Wi-Fi signals over the highest performance path to each client  Smart Roaming that can efficiently influence client mobility decisions and provide seamless roaming