What's you wireless design? Supporting High Density & Hundreds of Devices
Hi All...
I'm interested in what those of you that have implemented to address 500 + student wireless devices and classrooms where 35+ devices are pulling data from your wireless network? We currently have three sites, relatively new schools that we deployed a CISCO controllers and Access Points. In those schools we have APs connected to 1Gig, Power over ethernet (POE) ports. The design is, essentially, one wireless access point per classroom. Even with this set up we have seem some latency when 35 students are connecting to the wireless in a classroom. (We don't have a true 1:1 in these schools but COWS, computers on wheels-35 set carts). For example, GoogleDocs will show some slow response, ie. type a work in a doc and it shows up on the screen after a half second delay. This is not always the case in these classes, but we have had teachers express some slow access issues. In the rest of our schools we have implemented prosumer NetGear WAG102 access points and use them throughout the school in key locations. We also have one in each of our 5th Grade classrooms participating in our initial 1:1 netbook deployments. This surprisingly works quite well in these instances but it is unmanaged and occasionally suffers from location/building/infrastructure issues that are hard to track.
What wireless strategies are you using in your schools where you have deployed school wide 1:1 programs?
For those of you that have not deployed 1:1 school wide, what are your design plans for implementing wireless?
Looking forward to the discussions!
Thanks!
I'm interested in what those of you that have implemented to address 500 + student wireless devices and classrooms where 35+ devices are pulling data from your wireless network? We currently have three sites, relatively new schools that we deployed a CISCO controllers and Access Points. In those schools we have APs connected to 1Gig, Power over ethernet (POE) ports. The design is, essentially, one wireless access point per classroom. Even with this set up we have seem some latency when 35 students are connecting to the wireless in a classroom. (We don't have a true 1:1 in these schools but COWS, computers on wheels-35 set carts). For example, GoogleDocs will show some slow response, ie. type a work in a doc and it shows up on the screen after a half second delay. This is not always the case in these classes, but we have had teachers express some slow access issues. In the rest of our schools we have implemented prosumer NetGear WAG102 access points and use them throughout the school in key locations. We also have one in each of our 5th Grade classrooms participating in our initial 1:1 netbook deployments. This surprisingly works quite well in these instances but it is unmanaged and occasionally suffers from location/building/infrastructure issues that are hard to track.
What wireless strategies are you using in your schools where you have deployed school wide 1:1 programs?
For those of you that have not deployed 1:1 school wide, what are your design plans for implementing wireless?
Looking forward to the discussions!
Thanks!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Darin King on
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We are very similar and have deployed the Cisco solution in all 18 of our schools. We did this five years ago when we issued 800+ notebooks to all of our professional staff. Our initial design was coverage, not capacity. We are now in the process of increasing our density with the latest Cisco engine and AP connected at 1 gig.
Since we are in the planning stages of a 1:1, we are now focusing on the academic areas where we anticipate our initial deployment next year. We are probably going to do a 3 year implementation to full grade 5-12, around 5000 students.
We have also uses some prosumer solutions in our 1:1 pilot classrooms to increase the density and they seem to work just fine.
I have been intrigued by the potential of using devices that connect with G3 cellular networks. The good news is that it is not our infrastructure. The bad news is that it is not our infrastructure. I think there would be some pain with the pleasure of using a cellular providers infrastructure...
Darin -
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Permalink Reply by Rich Kiker on
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I know in our county the intermediate unit from the state DoE has a spectrum analyzer to measure hot and cold areas and I know it helps map load balance. It might be worth while to look into renting one or check with the DoE to see if they have one. Also, I suggest visiting some local universities and talking with their wireless engineers, they are the model for wide scale deployment and often have great solutions.
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