Boiler Up! Wi-Fi Refresh Project at Purdue University Improves Wireless Connectivity

• July 2, 2024

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The importance of strong wireless connections on college campuses cannot be understated. When visiting West Lafayette, Indiana, it wouldn't take you long to realize that Purdue University didn't have a strong, reliable Wi-Fi network for its 50,000 students and 20,000 staff members. The criticisms from students, faculty, and staff echoed throughout the residence halls, across the quads, and even into online chat forums like Reddit. Something had to be done!

"I didn't want to just put in more wireless access points to get a little better bandwidth and quality," said Ian Hyatt, CIO of Purdue University. "I wanted to provide the students the type of experience they had at their own home."

In 2022, a university-wide Wi-Fi upgrade was approved by the Board of Trustees. This upgrade would extend to Purdue's West Lafayette, Northwest, and Fort Wayne campuses, take five years to complete, and cost the university $2.6 million.

Once completed, wireless users will see network speeds four times faster than the current average speed of 150 Mbps with better connectivity in user-dense areas like residence halls and education buildings.

This project was a major undertaking and required a culture shift as the campus Wi-Fi network was previously overseen by the university's residence hall and student life offices and not IT. Also, any previous infrastructure work could only be done during summer break when students were not on campus. Now, not only has management of the campus Wi-Fi network been handed over to IT, but the so-called "blackout window" when infrastructure work could not be done has been limited to finals week and commencement weekend.

This culture shift has helped speed up upgrades and results are continuing to impress. "We installed the entire residence hall network across all the units in six months flat." Hyatt said.

The upgrade increased availability more than 20 percentage points, to over 99%. "It's such a huge difference," Hyatt said. The university upgraded to Wi-Fi 6 and, using Cisco Meraki, students can build their own networks with custom network names.

"The performance is amazing. It's not that we get good feedback-but the million bad feedback messages disappear," Hyatt said.

Sources:

fierce-network.com/wireless/purdue-u-gives-itself-wi-fi-glow

it.purdue.edu/newsroom/articles/230109-wireless-upgrades.php

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