The neighbor does not appear to be playing nice in the public wireless spectrum, knowingly or unknowingly. Perhaps you can check to see if you are using all the channels there are - perhaps work with your Public Relations/Marketing team to reach out to them and address it with the neighbor through a meeting. Often times this is just someone being funny and have no clue what "40Mhz" or "2.4" means. As a policy, we do not allow personal APs, wireless routers, or anything else that interferes with the campus network - I actively shut down ports to personal access points and routers. I will often follow this up with a scheduled, supervised visit to the room to discuss what caused them to want to use it - occasionally there is an issue I'm not aware of, or was not reported. It often turns into a learning and beneficial meeting so they know we care and want them to have good wireless. The students are often not trying to be malicious - they just want to get wireless reliably on their phone/tablet/laptop/game console/streaming device. When it doesn't work and doesn't get better, they often don't know who to go to, or that they CAN ask questions. I would suggest leading by example - see if you can turn down the power on the APs on the edge of your campus map to provide coverage for the area you need, but not beyond, so you are not flooding the wireless spectrum with your enterprise-grade radios. Just a suggestion. Its fun having a campus in a densely populated area.
Seth Bean Administrator of Networks and Telecommunications MCLA APA Chapter President Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts O:413.662.5022 M:413.663.1276 375 Church Street North Adams, MA 01247 “National Top Ten Public Liberal Arts College” 2019 US News & World Report [cid:65408478-bfc1-425a-88de-993a6a84c69e] ________________________________ From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <[email protected]> on behalf of John Rodkey <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2020 3:19 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] neighbors 'jamming' 2.4GHz spectrum CAUTION: This email originated from outside of MCLA. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. I put quotes around jamming, because it isn't technically. We are seeing an SSID named 'ACCESS DENIED' on 2.4GHz channel 4, with a 40MHz width and channel 8 extension. The signal is not high enough to interfere with most clients, but for some of our meshed access points, the signal level is fairly close to the signal available from the mesh's host access point. Is this a common thing? Have others seen the same on their campus, and if so, what are the policies and practices that you follow? I know the signal is coming from off-campus, but I don't have assurance that it is malicious intent or that it is intended to disrupt our campus network. John Rodkey Director of Servers and Networks Westmont College ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community
