Students and faculty are less frustrated with wireless connections in Javits these days.
Stony Brook’s Division of Information Technology heard the campus community’s complaints and, after reviewing survey results, implemented a new Wi-Fi system in the lecture building, saving many students and professors a lot of grief.
Javits is the main lecture hall on campus. With 10 lecture rooms, students and faculty rely on the Internet for teaching and learning purposes, further prompting the university to upgrade the existing LAN Wi-Fi service.
So on Aug. 23, the DoIT Data Network Services team installed Aruba’s 802.11ac Wi-Fi Solution. According to Campus Network Manager Mike Ospitale, the project cost $50,000.
“While designing the system, it became apparent that Javits would be a challenging implementation, with solid concrete walls, high ceilings, and a dense device environment,” he said.
Despite those challenges, the decision to upgrade the system was made last spring. Ospitale said this new technology promises to be 10 times faster than the current Wi-Fi system.
“I haven’t really noticed a difference,” fifth year computer science major Hendrik de Kock said.
Professors seem to enjoy the upgrade though. “Wi-Fi is Javits works much better for all the 200 plus students in my CSE215 since the new Wi-Fi network was installed in Javits,” Paul Fodor, a computer science professor, said. Fodor hopes that the union will be updated next because of the problems he has experienced with the Wi-Fi there.
Stony Brook is not the only university adopting a new wireless system. The University of Washington started to upgrade their system this past fall in what they called a “Wi-Fi refresh.”
Interestingly, the University of Washington is switching to SBU’s old system—their campus will be fully updated within the next two years. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Montana are additional universities that are also upgrading their systems.
Ospitale says that soon the technology deployed in Javits will be the standard for wireless on campus, but right now most of the university runs on the older Wi-Fi system. The new arena in the sports complex is next to receive this technology upgrade.
Also, according the initial press release, the residence halls are at the top of the list to eventually be upgraded to the new system.
