Wireless becoming less of an issue on campus
Wireless. It’s been a huge issue for years. But it isn’t for lack of work from the IT Department, and they aren’t giving up any time soon.
“We are constantly trying to make it better,” said Chris Golden, director of IT Operations.
According to Golden, some of IT’s biggest investments in wireless have been an increase in bandwidth from 400 to 600 mbps (megabits per second), and the combination of the bandwidth into one “pipe” instead of two.
A system’s bandwidth is how much information can be transmitted over a connection. Increasing it from 400 to 600 mbps means more of that data can be transferred every second, making every click that much more effective.
Golden said this change was necessary for Lee’s wireless system because people use the school’s Wi-Fi to access huge stores of information, taking up over four terabytes a week.
The number one program taking up the bandwidth? Netflix.
That didn’t catch Golden off guard. However, the fact that thousands of movies are being watched via Netflix every week on campus did.
“The sheer amount of data surprised me,” he said.
The runner-up for program consuming the largest amount of bandwidth is YouTube, followed by web browsing and then Facebook. Golden said that typically, when there are complaints about the Wi-Fi, it is because there are problems with these programs.
But the bandwidth increase wasn’t the only change made to improve wireless performance. The combination of all that bandwidth into one pipe (the vehicle through which information is transferred) instead of two has helped as well.
Golden said that in the past, when Lee had only 400 mbps of bandwidth, the bandwidth was split into two pipes with 200 mbps flowing through each one. One pipe was for administrators, while the other was for students.
This was inefficient because the administrators’ half of the bandwidth went untouched in the evening hours, while students on campus battled slow internet throughout the night and the very early morning.
“We used to have people waking up at 3 a.m. to reboot the system,” Golden said of the Operations staff.
The combination of the pipes allows administrators and students to access the bandwidth that they need when they need it.
Be on the lookout for continued wireless improvements from the Operations team.