Universities Unwire with “N”

Universities, already early-adopters of earlier flavors of Wi-Fi, are also leading the charge towards 802.11n, especially in North America, says ABI Research.

“Although current penetration of the higher education market is only 2.3%, that still represents a good rate of uptake for such a new, pre-standard technology,” says ABI Research vice president and research director Stan Schatt.

The reasons for this are the same as those prompting higher education’s already rapid adoption of previous Wi-Fi technologies: the need to serve large numbers of users at once, the demands of on-campus security, students’ expectations, and innovative use of video in the curriculum. The latter qualification is especially important in light of 802.11n’s five-fold expansion in bandwidth compared to its predecessors.

“As video becomes an essential part of the academic experience, bandwidth video requirements and newer laptops (which increasingly will have 802.11n built in) mean that a marriage of convenience will occur between students’ needs to view video anywhere on campus and the ability of 802.11n–enabled laptops to handle the bandwidth requirements,” notes Schatt.

Duke University, University of Arizona, Carnegie Mellon University, and many others are seeing significant deployments, conducted by vendors such as Cisco, Aruba, Meru Networks, and Trapeze Networks.

Trapeze recently announced a major deployment at the University of Minnesota, which will cover 22 million square feet of indoor space as well as outdoor space over two adjacent campuses.

Trapeze had a planning tool called Ringmaster that allows the university to use computer-aided design drawings of buildings to immediately begin planning where to locate the APs for maximum coverage in 300 buildings with 1,300 floors, and serving 80,000 students, faculty and staff.

The initial, $3.5 million phase of the Wi-Fi project will cover about 40 percent of the Twin Cities campuses — mostly inside classrooms and libraries. It is expected to take five years and $15 million to light up the two campuses.

The solar-powered Wi-Fi equipment installed in nearby St. Louis Park (above) never worked right. Like that city, the University of Minnesota will be trying to unload its old gear when the replacement of its new Wi-Fi network is complete.