Hi Jim, This is Aaron from Cal Poly University, San Luis Obispo, CA. One thing to keep in mind if you go all wireless, is your DHCP capacity...the students these days have multiple devices, and not just a desktop machine, like the old days. One wired port means one dynamic IP address, and if you're like our campus, you have already banned wireless routers. Now, say you switch over to all wireless; yes you take care of the problem of students clandestinely running wireless routers, and you take care of the problem of installing wired ports, but you have also effectively enabled them to put as many devices on the network as they want, gobbling up multiple IPs per person. Yes, you can tell CCA to allow only X number of logins, but that still doesn't prevent their iPod touches or iPhones or other similar PDAs from grabbing an IP address even if it's not in use. So, make sure you have a LOT of IP addresses. Also, keep in mind the newer nature of the traffic out there, and that wireless is a shared medium...so it's not so much "click and read" browsing type of traffic anymore, but streaming music, downloading music, etc, which gobbles up bandwidth like crazy. This means that you've got to plan out the capacity of the wireless network you put in, the type of traffic you're going to allow, the number of connections you can realistically do per AP, etc, otherwise your wireless network will impersonate a Pentium 2 trying to running XP Pro.
-Aaron On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:00 AM, James Moskwa <[email protected]> wrote: > Today, most all of our residence halls are wired (one jack per pillow on > average) with some wireless coverage in common areas. We are toying with the > idea of converting to 100% wireless, which would allow us to retire rather > than replace an aging switch infrastructure. > > As part of the investigation process, I was hoping to get some feedback > from other institutions on what they have done or are planning to do with > their residence hall infrastructure in regards to the wired vs wireless > question. > > Any input would be greatly appreciated. > > Regards, > -- Jim > > Jim Moskwa > Manager Networks & Security > Information Technology Department > Johnson & Wales University > 8 Abbott Park Place > Providence, RI 02903 > Office: 401-598-1556 > Fax: 401-598-1329 > Email: *[email protected] > * > > > -- Aaron Abitia Network Analyst Network Administration, ITS Cal Poly State University Tel: 805.756.1295
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