David,
Two summers ago we installed about 500 Access Points in our Residence
Halls. About 90% of them were installed directly in student rooms. The
remaining 10% went above ceiling tiles in the hallway. We did this
primarily b/c our Res Life staff was concerned about damage to the APs
and not being able to attribute the damage to any one person. With the
units in the rooms, the students in those rooms are responsible.
To my pleasant surprise, we have not had one issue with a student
tampering with an AP. I would guess this has to do with 1) they are
warned by Res Life staff at move-in time and 2) everybody uses the
Internet nowadays so they would be shooting themselves in the foot by
taking it down.
From a design standpoint, while it probably takes more APs to get the
same amount of coverage by placing them in the rooms, it makes for a
cleaner WiFi environment by decreasing the size of the cells. We made
sure 5Ghz was as strong as reasonably possible in all areas in the hopes
that it would keep devices out of the dirty 2.4Ghz space. I can't say
that we've been entirely successful, but I think that could also be due
to many 2-3 year old devices that don't have 5Ghz radios.
Back to cell size for a moment. Because the density of users/devices is
so high in these buildings, the cell sizes should be small anyway to
make sure there's enough spectrum available to keep people happy.
If you'd like any other information, feel free to contact me directly
off-list.
Regards,
-dan
Dan Brisson
Network Engineer
University of Vermont
(Ph) 802.656.8111
dbris...@uvm.edu
On 12/19/2012 8:36 AM, David Robertson wrote:
We are looking at how we install wireless in our Residence Halls for
coverage. Currently we only place access points in the hallways, but
are looking at moving them into the rooms for better coverage. We were
wondering if anyone else has put the access points in the rooms and if
they have seen a reduction in wireless complaint or if there have been
issues with students playing with or disconnecting the access points.
David R.
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