> The 5.0ghz radios have so many more channels now. So is this bandwidth > consumption and efficiency still a major concern > for many of you? I know this was most certainly a critical issue for the > 2.4ghz radios with only 3 channels, but my > stats are showing that 2/3rds of our clients now connect to the 5.0ghz radio. > AC allows for much better density. So > is the additional over-head of additional SSID broadcasts still a big issue? > If so, are there any articles talking > about this with regard to 5.0ghz technology? >
I would argue that 5ghz does not have nearly enough bandwidth we need. If you go to 180mhz wide channels you get 1 channel. There is already people working on getting more 5ghz freqency because no one thinks we have enough for the future. If we can not get a handle on student routers we will be in the same boat with 5ghz as we where with 2.4ghz. It is only a matter of time. You need to get a handle on 5ghz with policy and enforcement so that does not become the case. It is not just the ssid, which is a concern. the home routers are horribly configured and that affects your network performance. You wireless design and coverage is based on controlling all the access points and making them work together for the best possible coverage model. For example they have on all the lower data rates while we go around and turn them off for better performance. > > > As far as security is concerned, it just seems to me that keeping the enemy > out of our networks was a lost cause a long > time ago. I don’t even trust my fac/staff subnets let alone student ones. I > know that residential style routers are > not secure, but I have to wonder how significant this issue is. After all, > one is only gaining access to the network. > Nothing sensitive at this stage has been compromised yet. I wonder if this > is a marginal issue given how often hackers > gain access to computers inside networks anyways. For security you have two concerns. 1) you want everyone to have trackable authenticated access. You can't really do that if the user lets there friends connect. 2) You want to have a reliable secure connection. If they setup their own device and let others connect anything can happen and the network will get blamed. > > > I am really curious as to what many of you think about this. Do you have > policy to not allow student routers? Do you > put in effort to suppress student router deployment? > Ultimately I think It will come down to policies that clearly do not allow it coupled with a well designed network that allows people to do most things they want to do easily and reliably. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
