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Intel Ranks Colleges with Best Wireless Access
newdamage writes "Intel recently released it's ranking of The Most Unwired College Campuses and I was happy to see my school, Purdue, up there at #2. I can personally attest that my laptop w/ wireless card can be used over almost all of the main campus, and there's always a few people in lecture using laptops to access notes and take extra notes. Granted all I've found is that internet access in class just gives me a better way to not pay attention. What are other peoples' experiences with wireless access on their campus? Is there widespread coverage, and if so, does it help you get more school related work done by having your laptop connected where ever you are on campus?"
.. if there's an Animal House reference to be made here, I can't think of it. Curses.
"Derp de derp."
Although, I do see my former college there, and it's a fairly accurate rank I suppose.
Cowboy Neal is a Boilermaker? Any feedback from current Boilermakers using it at Purdue?
Wonderful what kind of technology they are teaching there? Obviously not wireless computers :P
As a student at the University of Florida, all I can say is it's no shock that it doesn't even rate in the top 50...
Newer buildings, and some of the larger older buildings and lecture halls, have Wireless, but the majority of the campus, including a couple of large buildings of classrooms, are completely devoid. In a lot of places where there is wireless, it's spotty and has a weak signal...
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
The most UNWIRED? The wording almost makes that sound like a bad thing. Intel should have gone with CowboyNeal's headline.
Rapidly approaching the Zener knee...
is that now they can choose schools based on those that are willing to offer them their porn how they want it, where they want it. And they want it.
Are the Most Unwired Airports and Most Unwired Cities lists.
Also, do these lists just count wireless access points that Centrino supports? It almost sounds like some sort of propaganda...
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Funny, I never would have thought Indiana would have the top two spots.
Sure, we're number 97, but at least we made the list. Take that number 98!
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
Thank you sir, may I have another? *Whack* Thank you sir, may I have another?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Microsoft ranks colleges with Best Windows/Office/Visual Studio education?
IU and Purdue are numbers one and two, so how come the wireless access at IUPUI (combined IU and Purdue campus in downtown Indianapolis) sucks?
That hardly seems fair. . .
My alma mater is #6 (CMU) and it has COMPLETE 802.11b wireless access from every point on the campus (thanks to some grant...). I wonder what the other 5 have that make them better???? .11g access??
gives me a better way to not pay attention
so tell us, where did you post that article from?
No Denver...
Why does Denver have to suck for tech so much?
We have snowboarding, we have outdoor stuff. We have 4 wheeling, no humidity...
Yet, there is sucky wireless access, and dumbass danceclubs. What's a geek to do?
Time for the greatful dead bars!
> from the fountains-of-knowledge-where-students-come-to-drin k dept.
Uh...we're really talking about alcohol, right?
Number 50 on the list is University if Missouri-Columbus.
I've lived in misery (ahem: Missouri) all my life, and don't know of this college, though I do attend the University of Missouri-Columbia.
(Well, I pay them, anyway. I rarely _attend_.)
I'm not exactly loyal, but damnit, I want my crappy college spelled right!
.sig
I don't usually bring my laptop into class, as I find it too distracting, as the submitter of the story mentioned. I found that trying to write notes and any of my own key words to accompany the information were crucial to triggering memories when it came time to remember the information later on. The few times I brought in my laptop, I always ended up doing something else and felt I'd missed some important piece of information during the lecture. Unfortunately I type faster than I can write, so I guess there's a tradeoff.
Northern Michigan University is as wireless-accessable as a campus can be. Pretty much every building has wireless in pretty much every spot. The university has also added access points to off-campus student hangouts like the local coffee/bagle shop and the public library. The University has handed out wireless-accessing laptops to every student. We're a large school with over 9,000 students. Northern Michigan University really should be in the top part of the list.
My college is # 60... 60???????? Its like Nerd Central!
Since I have housing in the Technology Quarters, I had some experience with the wireless network which was installed here early, but it was only with a PDA and not a full laptop. My room had poor reception, and I couldn't get a signal in any interesting places (like outside on the sun roof or patio). I'm hoping that next year when there's more access points up my new dorm will have better reception, particularly in the nice courtyard area.
Oh, and the network looks unencrypted so far. Which means I'll be checking my email with Pine over ssh. =b
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
you kids these days have it all.
back in my day, if you wanted to download porn, you had to wait until your roommate left for class, and then search for it on usenet. and if you got a single download that wasn't corrupt, you'd consider yourself lucky! nowadays with bittorrent and kazaa, life is so easy. if i had wireless access campus-wide, i might have spent alot more time in the classroom (my apartment had the four of us on a single dialup connection).
It's nice to see IU on top again. Wireless covers just about every square inch of campus. Granted, service is a bit spotty in Dunn Woods, but come on now! It is nice to be able to find a nice spot in the shade and people-watch. With wireless, I can catch up on email, or IM my friends (some in class, even). It sure beats sitting on the computer *inside*.
As a fellow Purdue student, I can attest to this as well. Our wireless network is virtually everywhere. It is with me when I sleep, when I work, when I... ok, getting carried away. I don't remember the original Matrix quote, sorry. I recall reading about this in the Exponent, and wondering about the wording, "unwired". Wireless would have been a little better, because "unwired" connotes the idea of not even being wired, much less past that. I guess it was chosen to be a part of Intel's Centrino advertisement jingle, "Unwire". What post would be complete without a plug for my school... Boiler Up! =P
But my partners in several group projects do, and they have come in handy many times when brainstorming to quickly assess the feasibility of our ideas right there. Granted, it could also be done in one of the public labs, but it is far more convenient to be able to work anywhere on campus. Plus, you don't have to deal with all the dirty looks from the people in the labs who are trying to concentrate. After just two semesters, I'm convinced, for the first time, that I could put a laptop to good use _as_ a laptop. Unfortunately, that doesn't make me able to afford one:)
They've taken a fairly decent approach to implementing wireless. While it is by no means campus wide, they've started by offering partial wireless to a specific building, and then full wireless access to the building. The best part is the buldings they started with are the ones comp. sci. students like myself and engineers frequent while it seems like the arts students are going to be last. I laugh at them while they're learning in class and I'm surfing the net. (oh wait, arts students don't learn anything anyways...)
My institute, the University of Idaho, made #33, but there's only wireless access in the Commons (like the student union, except more full of offices), the library, and the Administration buildings. Though to be fair there's a bunch of classes in the Admin. The cooler part is that there's IBM laptops available for checkout that are all wireless internet-enabled at both the library and the commons, available in two-hour blocks, with wireless printer access too--makes it easy to get a burger and print off the chemistry pre-lab before you have to go do it, heh.
I'm on a road shaped like a figure eight; I'm going nowhere but I'm guaranteed to be late.
I find in the classroom, internet access is more-so a distracting thing than a good thing, though not always. However, where it REALLY shines is outdoors and in the cafe type areas (Java Walley's at my school, RIT, comes to mind) where you can socialize, gather a group around, or whatever. In fact, I'm thinking of getting a el cheapo work laptop for this purpose. Getting out of the dorm room and away from instant access to the newest FPS can do a world of good. Overall, yay for wireless!
very suprised to U of Scranton there (that is where i go) - we are not wireless at all...
and very happy to see that Bergen-Passaic, NJ on the list and betting NYC...
NJ has many counties on the list (im so proud)
Well, I for one use wireless access in the classroom. Hell, I'm sitting in CS 480 right now, reading slashdot instead of paying attention. ;)
It's not a bug, it's a feature
Yes! My alma mater in there at #1. I can't wait to get back there. . .in 2007.
Damn you enlistment contract! All this just because I didn't want to pay tax on a pack of gum. That dog won't hunt, monseigneur.
Why isn't University of Texas at Dallas on this list somewhere? Almost every building here has wireless access.
is definitely great, I even get reception at the airport (part of campus, sort of); But it's definitely used to not pay attention. For instance, I'm supposed to be paying attention to a presentation right now.
That's not actually to offtopic. Jared went to IU Bloomington.
I'm kind of surprised. I attend a college that didn't even make the list, but the entire academic part of campus has complete wireless coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover dorms. In every classroom there are quite a few students (in some cases, every student) using laptops for taking notes (or playing games hehe). Of course, my college also requires every student to purchase a laptop when they enroll.
awesome. my school made #23. we beat MIT. and University of MD, college park, our "flagship campus" isnt even on there. ahh...gloating time!!!
insert generic
I'm a bit puzzled as where they came up with these numbers. I'm a grad student at William & Mary, which they placed in the top 50, and I find that wireless coverage is pretty spotty here. Meanwhile, at my undergrad alma mater U. Tenn, Knoxville, wireless access even covers a bunch of the *agriculture* campus, yet it doesn't make the list at all.
No surprise -- makers of lists like these don't usually attempt to apply any scientific methodology.
We have one of the few wireless engineering programs, but we dont make the top 100. Not surprising, wireless is only in a few buildings and the connections suck.
It's nice to see my school in the list. They've had wireless since like the day the first Apple AirPort base station came out, and they deployed it widely pretty much from day one.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
I have found that in class, all a laptop does is distract the students. Sure, we're supposed to follow along with the notes on our screens, but the prof can't see them. 90% of the time, everyone is surfing the web, talking on IM, checking their email, playing CS, basically everything but paying attention.
Further, most classes don't even require/use a laptop (it's pretty tough to take linear algebra notes on a computer). I estimate that maybe only 20% of classes or less use laptops actually IN class.
Most of the time when your laptop is required for class, it is just a pain to drag it to class, set it up, not use it for anything but to click through powerpoint slides. However, for the few professors who actually design the class with the use of the student's laptops in mind, it can be a great learning tool. It's nice doing in-class activities where you collect data and display it on your computer changing parameters to see the effect; or running simulations were you get to mess with the settings/initial conditions.
On the whole, I wished I could have saved a grand or so and purchased a desktop that could do the same as my laptop (after all, it spends all but 4 hours a week just sitting on my desk). For the, mmm, maybe 2 classes that the professor has actually incorperated the use of laptop into his lecture (same professor for both classes), it was a very powerful tool. Unfortunately, professors who know how to lecture well, especially incorperating a personal computer, are few and far between. An Unwired (or Wired) classroom can either be a great benefit, or a waste of time.
UT is #3 and Austin/San Marcos is #4...we win!
//brain
Most un-secure campus networks
The title of the survey is "Most Unwired College Campuses" which is implies a bad thing but just before the list it says:
"Below is a snapshot of the schools that made the grade"
and "made the grade" typically implies a good thing. Also consider the universities on the list.
Are they ranking from best to worst or worst to best? I suspect the former.
What a misleading survey title.
In a slightly offtopic topic, Wireless access points work surprisingly well on steel ships. The thick hull seems to contain the signal and students don't seem to have trouble. We don't have all that many watertight bulkheads, but certainly there are no really dead spots on the major habitation levels.
In the dining hall, snack bar, etc, places where wired links would be inconvenient, there is wireless, but in classrooms, most of the new desks have ethernet jacks (and 120V AC) built in. The Registrar tries hard to put classes that need laptops in the rooms that have the new desks. Its nice not only to plug into ethernet, but to AC as well. In 6 hours of classes, a 4 hour battery might not make it. Its nice also to crank the screen brightness up and not worry about the battery dying in the middle of something.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Being 'unwired' is only half the picture. I've worked at universities that had an extensive wireless network, but unfortunately the IT department had the network so restricted that I far prefered to work at home through my personal DSL service. On the otherhand, I've also worked at universities that, while not hosting nearly the wireless network, had an incredible IT department that really knew how to make things easy for me. I'd take incredible IT department over the extensive wireless network any day.
just adding that im at UMBC, for those too lazy to look up #23, and that i dont have a laptop to use with the wireless network they have here...but hopefully my new pda will get good coverage...
insert generic
Yeah, I have to say, Purdue's WiFi, affectionately known as AirLink, is pretty cool beans. It was my motivation for purchasing a cheap laptop and putting off upgrading the desktop another year or so.
As long as I shut the damn thing off when I'm in class, it isn't too distracting. It's so fantastic to be able to get a burrito or whatever in the Union, sit, catch up on email, do research (with the purdue.edu IPs it's easy to get into the library's online journals and stuff), listen to Air America Radio's stream, and so on.
If it hasn't made me more productive, I feel more productive, at least. And perception of functionality always trumps actual functionality!
The business school has had it far longer than any other portion of the main campus. The engineering campus has a decent rollout, but there are many areas where access isn't good.
I take all of my notes on my laptop, and I find it is better for test preparation than paper notes for me. In rooms where I've had network access I don't find it a distraction, but often I'll leave the network card out just to save power. Haven't been doing that recently since I my laptop supports two batteries at once and I get 6+ hours at a charge.
The main benefit is when all the lab computers are taken (which is pretty much all the time) I have not only a computer to work on, but my own environment with everything, including my notes, at my fingertips.
The engineering campus uses a VPN over wireless, so there's great security. The main campus uses no encryption so I try to avoid doing anything sensitive when I'm there.
-Adam -Adam
Oh Yeah? Let's see you're college/university do this.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
The wireless network goes beyond just the business school as well. It's the same network all over campus, with the same username/password combo as well as other authentication tokens. Here's a map. [ It's a big campus, solidly-packed with buildings. I'm guessing that what's shown on the map here is a bit over 2 square miles. ]
Of course, the Intel-sponsored school rankings doesn't include "foreign schools", but I've got to say I'm pretty impressed with things here at U of T.
Cheers,
Richard
Oddly enough, even though Intel is into promoting WiFi, they don't seem to want to encourage WiFi on their own campuses as much as they might.
I've heard that at Intel your manager has to get you permission to use WiFi and your department must pay some sort of ongoing fees to some other group for the priviledge.
offshoring jobs [test for equality] economic terrorism?
do you mean "offshoring jobs EQUALS economic terrorism" (in which case you would use the assignment operator "="), or are you asking a question and want us to give you the result of the comparison?
if the latter, i believe "Offshoring Jobs == Economic Terrorism" evaluates to FALSE (0).
If you are interested in some statistics for the Purdue wireless network:
http://www.noc.purdue.edu/traffic.php?tree_id=10
For more general information:
http://www.itap.purdue.edu/airlink/
woot! ucr is 16 on the list. Glad my student fees of 1800/yr is going to something useful.
Did I mention 3mbit up/down on the wireless?
aah, I love ***lecture hall (its a secret! if I told you, then the bandwidth would disappear). Has an 11a AP that nobody uses (cuz all the suckers are on 11b)
-Happy Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
I'm a 2nd-year at The University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, Ontario (Canada, eh?). I just helped the IT team here put up and configure our network. It's a small school, ~1600 students next September, 10Mbit ISP pipe distributed among 16 cisco access points on a 4-floor building. Currently running dual 802.11B/G with an incredibly strong signal in all corners of the building.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
I attend the University of Alabama in Huntsville, which has an atrocious track record on networking issues.
Our Network Services department, despite repeated requests from faculty and students, has not set up any sort of wireless coverage anywhere on campus. They also prohibit faculty and students from setting up their own wireless equipment, whether or not it is connected to their network. I am not permitted to put a wireless NIC in my desktop and have it talk to my laptop, even if neither machine is on the campus network.
(I figure that since I'm allowed to use a cordless telephone operating in the 2.4GHz band, Network Services has no right to dictate what other signals I generate in that band.)
Any Slashdotters who are pondering attending this university should think carefully about whether they are willing to accept the complete lack of wireless and consistent 15-25% packet loss on the dormitory connections. (People use dialup because it's more reliable.)
In contrast, a friend of mine in Washington University Law School frequently IM's me from class lamenting how boring class is. (How someone can be bored with a computer (with 3d card) and network access in front of them is left as an exercise to the reader.)
Coverage here at the University of Texas at Austin is very good; everywhere I have gone has wireless access. Except, of course, my dorm room where I have to pay $20/mo for "ResNet" that is frequently down. Everywhere I have been outside of dorm rooms is covered by at least 1 access point, usually several. Also, Austin was ranked well for wireless cities with so many restaurants/stores/public places offering free WiFi that is understandable. I recently drove from a restaurant back to campus with my laptop open and it counted over 300 access points in a 10 minute, 5 mile ride (yes, roads suck in Austin). I know the University is planning on selling wireless access to non-university affiliates in addition to the already franchised students, staff, and faculty, so that will make it easy for visitors to campus to enjoy the wireless, though they might as well bum off of the many cafes around campus for free instead.
Here were I study in Germany we've got hotspots in almost every classroom and pretty much everybody has a laptop. This is because of the payment facilities given by the Uni (granted, they get sucky models and prices are not so cheap, but I won't get into this or I'll never end this post). Unfortunately few people really use their laptop in class for taking notes. Almost everybody else is using IM/surfing the net/watching movies (!!) during class. Regardless, using your laptop during a boring lecture is much better than falling asleep, IMHO.
Still, I'd be curious to know in which place on the list my university would end up.
R.
I study at ITESM in Mexico. According to this link, we have a good place as one "organization transforming its businesses using networking technology". I think that includes WiFi acces. We have access in the whole campus!!!! We should be listed!!!!
-- When did Ignorance Become a Point of View?
This is pointless, #29 is LSU, where I went. I setup the wireless there. Yes, I, 1 person. It was 2 airports in the library.
Here at Ball State they recently set one up, except you can't get to it unless you're near a window in many of the buildings. And everyone uses it to play games in the classes they have to attend.
Right, but it's far too easy once you hop online to click that slashdot or lj bookmark, or see if there's a torrent for the most recent episode of $favorite_tv_show.
Penn State University isn't on there? And WVU ( West Virginia Univ ) is???? Maybe I should have stayed in WV...
Slashdot sucks
I am a third year computer science major and I can assure you that sometimes the best tool is just a pen and paper. I always see idiots trying to draw a diagram in Word or trying to find that obscure math symbol burried within the special characters menu and all I can do is laugh to myself.
Surprised St. John's made the list. I went there like 10 years ago and if they even had computer labs they were well hidden.
and we use exclusively Cisco and 3 Com gear.
... then I'm confused since our wireless network is really quite good.
...
I'm kinda surprised that we don't have a higher rating, since almost all the main areas of campus are covered, as well as roughly half the undergraduate dorms. It makes me wonder how they're doing their calculations. If it's total coverage / campus size or something silly like that then I could understand 68th (since we have a 8000+ acre campus) -- if they're using some sensible measure
(and yes, I'm a student and Residential Network Admin here at Stanford)
-S
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
are also wireless devices, useful for communication and recording information.
C|N>K
50. University of Missouri-Columbus (Columbus, Mo.) I know the University of Missouri - Columbia is pretty well covered (by mostly Cisco equipment) but, I've never been to UofM Columbus...
I really don't see how you could improve Carnegie Mellon's wireless network. I have never been anywhere on campus where I couldn't get a strong signal. There are even power outlets everywhere - even outside - for the "weak-batteried". Bringing your laptop to class is as normal as bringing a pencil. Check out CMUSky, it gives great statistics about Andrew in real-time.
I've found, as a student at Rochester Institute of Technology, having a wireless campus has allows me to more easily waste my idle time surfing the web, chatting on IRC or AIM, etc., instead of browsing through class notes, or doing homework with a pencil and paper. A perfect example of this is our Crossroads Cafeteria. It's so easy for me to surf the web while eating lunch as a result of wired access, when I should be reviewing notes or spending my time otherwise. Perhaps it's self-discipline and not the wireless access that's the problem, but I've really found nothing good about it.
Tis a shame that english unis arnt on the list, Portsmouth universoty has a 90% academic areas coverage, which of course spills over into alot of other nearby areas, making the wifi quite accessable over parts of the city. But this is quite badly secured (well extrenally, it uses novel encryption, and computer access usename authentication) and there all controled by a central body, ie file sharing is disallowed. Thing is the halls dont have them, oh well, well make do with our wired network there (and our bootleg wifi one!)
we're college students, and we're all supposed to be able to afford laptops?
The school I go to (Pennsylvania College of Technology) has official WAPs in several of the larger buildings, and then there's any number of student-owned WAPs that probably cover the entirity of on-campus housing. One of the guys I know picked up over 300 signals from the comfort of his on-campus apartment with a large (+18db?) antenna. Shame the school's network setup itself is crap... including the school's router occasionally changing everybody's address translations at once. and this school's probably around 1/3 CS students.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
I got to Kansas State (#47 on the list incidentally) and the only reason I looked at the site was to see if my school even made it and if so, question the integrity of the list.
K-State technically has wireless in some buildings, but not many. Yes, the library and union have wireless as do a few others, but that's where it ends. The biology and physics buildings both lack it entirely, as does the main building for the college of arts and sciences and only a large lecture hall in one of the main engineering buildings is listed as having it. Since it was installed I might have taken one or two courses that would have made it available to me. I don't have a wireless laptop myself (although my girlfriend does and I've been interested in how good the coverage is), but I doubt you'd be able to get online from anywhere outside on campus at all.
Essentially this is something they did about 2 years ago and then more or less have ignored ever since. The website for it lists that more locations will be coming, but in that time none ever have. IT out here is a joke though. Bandwidth in the dorms was so bad (i.e. >2k/sec) a few years back that almost every single student living in them had to sign a petition about it before we barely got some degree of improvement (up to maybe 10-20k/sec). The IT staff is frequently unreachable having locked themselves off in the library basement and rarely if ever respond to e-mail.
The presence of K-State on that list seems to indicate that the list compilers merely looked over webpages and cataloged the number of areas listed without any regard for the actual coverage provided.
This list is ironically reflects the same results as the "Top school where students get the least ammount of tail" list.
Campuses are usually large plots of lands. It's commendable that universities are providing wireless networks at all!
To add to the accomplishment, many buildings are older and made of cinder block (at least around where I live - College Park MD). 802.11 through concrete and/or cinder blocks is like trying to drive a Zamboni through a bog. The fact that any wireless penetrates buildings and reaches students in class is quite amazing imo.
Do it for da shorties
UT Dallas Wireless coverage
In the on campus apartments, there is only wireless. They have 802.11b throughout all of the housing, as well as what's listed on that map.
To be honest I think it's a good thing. Many of my CS professors do all coursework submission through an online service, so students can keep up with what's posted on it and point out when things aren't posted as they should be in class, rather than by e-mail after class. The EE/CS building is the most widely covered, and while a bit flaky in a few lecture halls, it seems to be quite functional.
The only downside to having a totally wireless network in the housing end is that the positioning of the repeaters in the apartemnt buildings was bad enough that I cannot get a decen t enough signal in my bedroom (I fork out for cable).
I was wondering the same thing. My university came in at #46 (Creighton University), yet the wireless coverage here isn't that great. The only areas covered are the library, student center, and some of the academic buildings. None of the dorms have it and outdoor coverage is very weak. The other big university in town is University of Nebraska at Omaha, their campus is covered a lot better from my personal experience, and they don't make the list at all.
Columbia has great wireless access. Campus is small, so it's easier, but I'm hooked up basically everywhere on campus. Of course, once I cross the street I'm high and dry, and the law school uses MAC filtering. Ah well.
Didn't make it. I can use wireless in all my classes and it is expanding very quickly. They didn't make the list though:( It does make it hard to pay attention at times though. I can access all my notes and it does make it much easier at times to keep up in class also. I couldn't live without my laptop even if there wasn't wireless.
Look at the title in the browser window for the UNWIRED list:
Intel(r) Products: MMost Unwired College Campuses Survey
$cat
UNC , NCSU , DUKE humm all use bunches of powerpc and sparc so I guess that is why the ratings is so wrong. Look where you got your information , Golly, you should be ashamed. Slashdot prints another biased ad.
I work for the UTK wireless LAN, and I was also surprised not to see us on there. We have around 1500 access points, and basically blanket the campus with a wide-open 802.11b/g signal. There is no place I've found that you can't get a decent connection. Surprising that there are at least 50 schools ahead of us.
I go to Montclair, the second largest University in NJ behind Rutgers, and our entire campus iis wireless and yet not even a 100th place.... Infact about half of NJ's schools are entirely wireless and only Cheaton Hall, a freaking private school, got a placement. something tells me this is a fix.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Providing decent wireless access to a university with a student body of 7,000 is considerably less challenging than accomodating 20,000+ students, staff, and faculty. I wonder if this was taken into consideration, since Intel's description only seems concerned with signal saturation.
Several of the schools on the list have comparitively small campuses; I noticed that neither of the two biggest universities in the US--Michigan State U. and Ohio State U.--made the list. If MSU, for example, offered sufficient wireless access to accomodate even 1/4 of its student body, that would be an admirable feat.
Flawed though the results may be, it's rather interesting to see Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 schools on this list--especially since so many Tier 3 schools beat out Harvard.
right on brother !
Go Tigers!
Ten years ago, VA Tech was supposed to be the most wired school in the country, and Blacksburg the most wired town. Remember all the hype about the Blacksburg Electronic Village?
Well, no more. It's pathetic. They keep talking about going wireless, but it never happens. Furthermore, VA Tech must have the laziest CS geeks anywhere -- don't bother WAR-driving -- you won't find a damn thing. Blacksburg is looking like backward Appalachia again these days. There's no public internet access except for the county library. It's pathetic to think we have to wait for Starbucks to come to town, and charge us $6/hr or whatever. They're finally opening this month. Even nearby Roanoke, one of the most backward towns in America, has free public wireless access downtown.
So WTF is wrong with VA Tech, and Blacksburg?
The Univeristy of Texas at Austin is #3, and my univeristy, University of Texas at San Antonio only has 1 open WAP from what I can tell. and I bet they'd close it if they knew. I've done some sniffing, they have a lot of WAPs around, but they're set to not broadcast ssids. I hear we're not even supposed to plug into ethernet jacks.
Oh well, I hear they'll have wireless either mid-summer or in the Fall. and I think I heard they'll be 802.11g, I like using it at home with cable, but it ought to be great hooked up to an Internet2 pipe.
From what I can tell with the one class that has ethernet jacks at the seats, it's extremely useful to have internet access in the class. I can look up information on the current topic and look really smart, or just figure out what the hell the professor's talking about.
Could it be that these are just the U's who have more business w/ Intel. A lot of universities use Apple airports--could they be ranking lower?
Considering my school (The University of Texas at Dallas) has complete covereage in every building (including the 63 on campus apartment buildings), and several of the schools ranked only have wireless in a few of their buildings, I seriouly wonder how much research actually went in to their chart.
As far as the usefullness, I've found I can concentrate much better in several of the lounges and study corners across campus than in my apartment, and having wireless Internet access allows me to do research on the Internet in those locations, which is a great convenience.
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
I attend at #20 on the survey. I see probably 2% of people using laptops in class, and they usually aren't paying attention at all. I would bring my laptop, but I have no working battery and I prefer writing notes anyway (it makes me pay attention).
Some more wired classes like my computer sciences courses though I would love to have a laptop, so I could sit in class and work on the homework. I don't even need internet for that.
We've got a wireless accesspoint for every lecture hall, and as far as I know there isn't a point in any lecture buildings where you can't pick up an 802.11b signal. Plus, you can get one in about 50% of the dormitories too because so many people have personal ones that they in no way secure. The disadvantage to an up to date college is that they try to do packet filtering, and you can tell when they improve the filtering because the connection lag drops. While the lag has improved over the semester, it's just now starting to get decent. But hey, I usually get 500KB per second down once I connect so how can I complain?
#96 - wireless covers one of the engineering buildings (strictly electrical and computer science - mechanical, civil, etc are across the street in another building) and there are a few APs in the student union. Not exactly an-unwired campus.
BU needs to start putting wireless access in the dorms...
Indiana University may be ranked #1, it must be said that Purdue (#2) has secured their wireless. Last I checked IU uses WEP. Purdue uses a VPN-secured connection where all of the wireless traffic is encrypted using 168-bit 3DES, as compared to the 128-bit or even 40-bit encryption offered by WEP.
I'm just amazed at the number of crappy CS schools near the top...
Intel obviously only rated schools in the US. Otherwise, my university would have no doubt ranked near (at?) the top.
/.ers checking the news during class.
The UBC Wireless Network is one of the largest Campus Wi-Fi Networks in the world. There are over 1200 access points (in 120 buildings), and together, they cover nearly all of the 1000-acre campus. I have never found myself in an area on campus where I was without internet access =).
I've even seen some fellow
My next step is to check if I can get Wi-Fi access while I'm catching some sun on Wreck beach.
(FYI, Wreck beach is the name of the nude beach on campus...and before the bad jokes start, I'm not your typical overweight/underweight geek)
called "Political Trolling Memetic Propaganda" or PeTMePlease.
In this language "==" means "almost typical enough of a slashdot poster's jargon to elicit a sympathetic response to the political propaganda" which is a much more powerful operator than a simple assignment or test for equality.
Or something like that.
I can't tell you how cool it is to see my alma mater and former employer ranked #8. As a computer sci instructor, I was always grateful that I could get an internet connection anywhere on campus, but I never knew how good I had it! Cheers!
"I'm really tired of the Universities on the West/East coasts pissing on the Midwest Universities."
Reminds me of a joke...
"Which way do I leave from?"
"Here at Harvard, we don't use prepositions to end our sentences."
"Alright. Which way do I leave from, asshole?"
(Purdue, thinking were better than the people who think they are better than us since 1869.)
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
Note taking is an evil distraction, that misleads you into the belief that you're actually getting something out of the lecture, while all you're really doing is taking dictation and not thinking about the bits passing from your ears to your hands. Once you get rid of the note taking crutch, you're forced into critical thinking -- that's how people actually learn.
...-.-
How many more buildings than every bilding on campus need to have wireless access to score better than 33rd? I sense bias in the report.
The Ezine Directory
I agree.. it seems to be an odd list. Cleveland State University has wireless access in all the buildings on campus and even on the athletic fields (why, I have no idea) yet it's not anywhere on the list. Granted, it's a podunk little state school in Ohio with only 20,000 students, but it's quite nifty to be able to pull out my iBook and browse the net or pull down some homework that I forgot on my machine at home to work on.
that aren't even ranked in the top 100
slashdot their site to teach them a lesson!
(no, I don't know how that's suppsoed to help.
GW started rolling out wireless a couple years ago with horrible (non existant) security. They then moved over to a Cisco VPN client which has simplified the process a great deal. Any wireless card works, and the software is available for linux, mac and even windows.
You might find it interesting that before they changed the security, I did a security presentation on 802.11b here at gwu, and I added a case study on how bad the library security was.
http://www.student.seas.gwu.edu/~justinc/
They made me take down the entire presentation!
Overall, I am very satisfied with the system, and as more access points are added you can get online most places on campus.
Hey! RIT made it (98) ... what are they thinking? I can barely access WIFI when sitting in the far side of a classroom (ie by exterior wall). This is in the BRAND NEW College of computing. BAH! RIT - welcome to the world of not really understanding technology :) (At least faculty/staff - ask _ANY_ student!)
-dave
/* Lobster Stick To Magnet!*/
I go to the University of Texas( #3 on the list ). Wireless is omnipresent on campus. Not only in classrooms, but hallways, dining areas, even outdoors. In fact, I am so spoiled that sometimes I pull out my wireless pda and am shocked and angered if I don't get a signal. I think everyone else is just jealous their alma mater didn't make the cut :P
Look again at that list, #33 is clearly Philadelphia, PA not #53 Memphis, TN...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
You're a grad at W&M? What department, that school is my Alma Matter, drop me an e-mail sometime, I'd love to know how things are there these days.
This ranking really doesn't mean too much. It's judging based on quantity (of hotspots, students, etc.), not quality. I'm attending one of the schools in the top 5 and, let me tell you, I'd probably get better wireless access wardriving around than I do sitting in the middle of campus. Sure there may be a lot of base stations, but there aren't *enough* to cover the campus (there are plenty of unlucky people whose dorm rooms get only 5% signal strength at any given time). What APs there are, are often down, further reducing the network's utility.
It's probably based on the number of Centrino mobile equipped laptops sold by each University's computer/book store.
-- "The reward of suffering is experience." - Aeschylus
I do not think they have done their homework very well. DePaul University in Chicago, for example, is not listed. They have the largest computer science department in the country; the computer science department and almost every student area are 100% wi-fi.
Not to mention that all classrooms and prof. offices have distance learning capabilities. A student can use his remote connection, or wi-fi from any public area, and have a visual advising session with his/her favourite professor.
I have never seen anything comparable in the other universities listed by INTEL.
I go to SUNY Geneseo (#25 on the list), and I just see the wireless access as a time waster. The few times I have actually brought my laptop to class, it's been more of a distraction than a tool. Coverage is mainly in the academic buildings and lounges, used with a laptop I purchased through the school (IBM TP R31 with 802.11b...thank god for the service contract, or I would be screwed!!) Not enough profs use the technology, and it just seems to be a gimmick to everyone except those outside of the campus.
Most Unwired Airports
This list doesn't agree with my experience. Within the last couple of months, I've found stable wireless coverage in O'Hare (number four), for example, to be limited to the umbrae of Admirals Clubs, while the entire Northwest terminal in Detroit (not on the list) seems to be covered.
I was sitting in the back ranks of a Comp Sci lecture at Cal (GO BEARS!) the other month in a raked-theatre seating and was watching two games of Warcraft and a four-way Worms World Party game going on beneath me. And all that could have been done just with ad-hoc wireless.
Imagine the various (popcap.com) wastes (aim.aol.com) of (www.mirc.co.uk) time (www.slashdot.org) that're possible with classroom net access.
Ok, I went to Purdue. As a result, I know how much money and equipment Intel donates to Purdue. It would be interesting to see the correlation between this list and their donation list. I bet they match up very nicely. Microsoft pays their case studies, Intel probably isn't very different.
today is spelling optional day.
What is the relevance of this? I've seen people posting already about how their school has barely any wireless access at all and why that school is even on the list... but seriously, what does it *mean* to be on the list? Does it mean much of anything? Personally, I don't necessarily care if my school has wireless access on its campus with 100% coverage. It is not an important decision in choosing to go to school there, but apparently, some people do.
Well, for those that actually do their time in university and study and work hard, this is a totally irrelevant 'rating list' that I don't see the merit in being a headling on Slashdot. Of course, as has been pointed out in the past, the quality of the headlines appearing on Slashdot seems to be diminishing. MAybe I should stick to Kuro5hin.org...
Number 100. It would have been pretty embarassing if Georgia TECH hand't made the list. I thought our wifi was pretty good actually.
Purdue sucks.
Why did Purdue rip up the gymnasium floor and replace it with cardboard? (Purdue always looks better on paper)
Why do IU fans like their team to play on the road at Purdue? (No championship banners to obstruct their view)
If you don't like Slashdot, you are free to go back to KuroShit. I, for one, don't want to hear you whine about something you are too narrow-minded to understand.
I use wireless to download supplementary notes and study material, as well silently ask my friends in the classroom questions relating to the material.
Its also useful for finding quiet places to study at the University. I can take my laptop to a silent place outside while I study and take more notes.
I'm a little surprised that the university I attend, Grand Valley State University, didn't make the list. About 95% of our non-housing buildings have APs, along with several student housing centers. (Residents aren't allowed to set up their own APs, however, as this is a security risk.) Computer-to-student ratio is good, and we have about 16,000 undergraduates.
:)
However, we have an 18-hole golf course and plenty of outdoor athletics facilities, so that's a lot of on-campus space that isn't covered. I imagine this may have bumped us out of the rankings, as percent of campus coverage was considered.
On the other hand, the Grand Rapids-Holland-Muskegon area (home of Grand Valley) is rated 74th in the Most Unwired Cities survey.
Well, be happy you have more than just ONE LOUSY AP ON THE ENTIRE CAMPUS like Los Angeles Valley College has. ONE LOUSY AP!!! It's in the cafeteria. You have to have an LA Community College District Windows Domain Logon to use it, but you don't necessarily need to run Windows to use it, thankfully. Just a browser that can do SSL will do.
:P
:P
Still..ONE LOUSY AP.
Oh yeah, the Community College System in the State of California is in way worse financial trouble than the University of California is.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Wireless networks in University environments are a job half done even when well done. That's because the half of the network in the hands of student, their network client, is relatively inaccessible to far too many students due to cost. I (among many others) have played a part as an employee in creating the University of Texas wireless network and, though I have no idea how accurate Intel's rankings are, I do think the UT wireless network is pretty good. But its capacity is underutilized because there are far fewer clients connecting than it can support. Partly this is due to lack of highly compelling academic need for wireless access so the logical conclusion of many students is not to pour money into a quickly obsolescent EXPENSIVE notebook computer. My point is this: there needs to be a relatively cheap ($500) useful wireless client, not necessarily a notebook computer. If there was an inexpensive PDA level-of-power client that had a good screen (say 800x600x16bit) and a semi-decent keyboard (not thumb-board) with a few hours of battery life (say 4 or so) then students might buy these in fairly large quantities. Maybe even enough people would have them to actually heavily utilize the existing wireless network. More importantly, wireless access would be so common that it would become painfully obvious that class instruction needs to use this technology effectively and it is justified for the faculty to invest time orienting teaching techniques toward it (appropriately, not just reflexive and perfunctory stuff just "'cause it's there"). If only some vendors would decide that a good screen on a PDA doesn't necessarily imply high end and high cost components top to bottom when you have good network support then maybe they would see the wisdom of building such a device. The network is built, now we need a way for them to come...then they will.
They have good coverage in the libraries, the technology building (PKI), and all around the student hall and decent coverage in the dorms. I get the strongest signals right near the main administration building though, where the IT staff works. They must have carpet-bombed that area with access points, you can go almost an entire city block with strong signal from that place. (Must be nice to work in IT there.) U.N.Omaha didn't make the Intel list, I wonder if that's because they're mostly (exclusively?) building their wifi network on Cisco APs.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
How credible can this report be when Virginia Tech isn't even listed!
of my academic life, they have singlehandedly ruined me, which is why I'm going to school to work with them, that is all.
is not on there because who needs wireless when you never leave the lab? Sure, for you fleshware losers that want to eck, go outside, go to cafe's, sit in the quad or whatever it is... sure...
Does it bother anyone else the way that Intel is acting like they spearheaded the wireless internet phenomenon? I mean, it's not like they INVENTED anything! 802.11 b (ratified 1999) and g (July 2003) are standards and have been around longer than the Centrino branding (late 2003). If anyone beat Intel to the party, it was Apple with its Airport (released June 1999) which followed the 802.11b standard AND offered internal wireless connectivity in portables. Yes, over 4 years before Intel started this crapfest of misleading marketing and branding! I've actually been told that Intel invented wireless networking and Apple has to pay a fee to use it. And have you seen the ads? They act like basetations and ranges don't exist and it pulls the internet out of nowhere.
The best thing about wireless access is that if you think a professor is wrong you can find a resource to prove it to him/her. One ballsy guy in my class was able to prove our prof wrong and took the wind out of his sails. Not only does wireless access improve slacking skills, but also improves the quality of education.
.deviatefromtheabsolute.
Interesting to see that Harvey Mudd is 21, and Pomona College is 82, seeing as how they're both Claremont Colleges, and pretty much their campuses overlap. (Also note the omission of any other Claremont College.) Who knows, tho ... Although it is nice to see that my school is up there at 12 (UCR), but I was intrigued by CalTech's not making the list. Probably the older buildings.
-- Rob
Y'a jamais des choses qu'on peut pas se débrouiller ; juste laisse-moi t'aider!
What a bunch of f%cking crybabies. Mod me down, but if you read through a bunc of the messages, you'll see one person at a time whine about the fact they had no problems at their school. And based on that observation, their school should be ranked at the top.
So if the poll was "who has the best parking situatio?" and someone said, "I don't have any problems where I go." It would mean your school is the best? A single case of sampling means squat when it comes to statistical analysis.
Maybe the list is based on how many Intel Wireless cards the school bought?
my blog
I graduated from the ITESM (Monterrey Campus, in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico). The amount of money spent in technology here is mind boggling. :))
For starters, the ITESM, has been part of Internet2 for years (about two or three). Has had high speed wired networks everywhere but the restrooms for ages. They have been requiring laptops for every undergraduate since 97 (if you couldn't afford one, the school financed it). And has had wireless networks since 2000. Right now, you can have acces to 802.11a, b or c anywhere in school (yes, including restrooms, dont ask me how I know
Most exchange students from the US or Europe are always surprised of this (Even Kevin Mitnick, to whom I had the opportunity to meet him at a conference here at school, and actually had a chat with him about this same topic).
Most classes are now what they call "redesigned" to be accessible trough the web or before that, using Lotus Notes. They even built a new 15 million dollar hall, which is called CIAP (International Center for Learning for its initials in spanish.) and almost every class is dictated in english with videocameras recording every class so everyone can check them out later on the web (Still in experimental stages).
I think that in many aspects, catching up is almost always better, since you can learn from other's mistakes and benefit from newer a better technologies, like the ones we've been enjoying here at the ITESM, in a little undeveloped country called Mexico.
This is not my sig, I just copied it from somebody else.
Not surprised about that. We just now got wired lans in major spots at my university, will probably be another decade or two before wireless makes it here.
C:\>
trying to get a job in this ever increasingly outsouced IT economy.
All the machines are on public IPs and there is no sort of virus scanning or update requirements at all. We accidentally put a fresh Windows install on the wireless network and got hit with a worm in 30 seconds. The network nazis, under orders of our joke of a security office, often filter DHCP addresses because of viruses, which is great until you accidentally get the lease for a filtered address.
UT just finally figured out that maybe they should offer SSL POP and IMAP on the central mailserver after having kids on unencrypted wireless for 3 years. VPNs are just now being looked at.
The worst thing about wireless at UT is it's so inconsistent. There aren't nearly enough APs in highly populated areas, meaning you get dialup speeds are not uncommon. There are dead spots everywhere because of poor AP placement.
We were doing a voice over wireless IP pilot, and it was impossible. Each building is on it's own VLAN and they don't route to each other. Some wireless systems are maintained by departments and you can't even log into them. We could communicate in our building, but the building across the street was blind. Even getting the phones to work, with UTs homebrewed authentication system, was a beast.
a map of LSU's wireless coverage
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
We have sporadic wireless coverage on our main campus (a cluster of buildings downtown). It exists mostly for the sake of a few specific applications and any access beyond that falls into the "nuisance" category. I can't say I blame my superiors for not doing more with wireless; we have enough problems securing our network from the ill effects of viruses and trojans on wired, college-owned systems, and dealing with personal wireless systems would be a nightmare.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Doing tech support at NDSU in Fargo and working for the largest college (Engineering and Architecture) we have faced constant opposition to our setting up wireless access in the electrical engineering building, as it may not conform to the upcoming "campus standard". It's basically 5 of us in our small office vs. ITS (Information Technology Services), which does tech support for some of the other colleges and operates the campus LAN. ITS has been "planning" to do wireless all over campus for over 2 years, but it still is bogged down in committees. We managed to do a whole building in less than 2 weeks for $1000. By the looks of the comments we aren't the only university that has been in the "planning" stage for way too long.
Like most law schools, it is pretty much expected that every student in every class will have a laptop in front of them so that they can "take notes". Some people argue that wireless internet access is a distraction in the classroom, but I disagree. It simply makes the distraction of a laptop more productive. Instead of endless games of solitare, students are able to check their e-mail, read the news, do research for other classes, etc... (and write posts on slashdot). These are all things that a student would probably spend time on at some other point in the day. But wireless internet access in the classroom allows students to perform these daily tasks at a time when they would otherwise be wasting time on solitare games.
The Bottom Line: I love wireless access. It has made me a more productive slacker.
...but it still sucks that no laptop battery will last through a full day of classes. Cold fusion batteries = true wireless.
Of course they don't... The whole purpose of this 'study' by Intel is to encourage schools to buy up their products. It's a marketing ploy so schools can proudly declared themselves "Most Unwired".
I'm also an alum of UTK: I have to agree. The UTK wireless is pervasive and remarkably reliable. It just works. And, you guys are gonna upgrade the whole campus to 802.11g over the summer?
The coverage at UTK is much better than some of the places I've been as a visitor that made the list: Northwestern, UNC (really bad, actually), Washington, Vandy.
Just to prove I'm not a shill: I should say that I generally don't have a very high opinion of UTK OIT. But the wireless is just done right.
As a student of The University of Akron I can definately say our campus has done a very nice job with the wireless setup (ranked #7). We have school laptops that you can borrow at key locations (library, student center...), and the entire campus - in my opinion - has VERY good wireless access. Heck - even our stadium that is 4 miles from the main campus - has wireless connectivity.
Here at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay Ontario Canada we have no wireless access whatsoever. Our all-knowing president (who is a zooologist) is paranoid about the "health effects" of wireless signals (i.e. cancer). What's sad is we just built a $47M technology building that has no wi-fi. The local community college does have 2 buildings fully wi-fi equipped so signals are acquired upon entry to the building (and maybe outside, I don't spend any time there so I'm not sure).
...now too bad that our CS program sucks here at IU.
Too bad that the survey is purely for US campuses, despite the misleading Slashdot headline.
Canadian schools are very unwired. The campus upon which I work, UBC, has a strong wireless net, free to use for anybody with laptop and an antenna.
It's so good that, despite the fact that my building is on one distant corner of the huge campus, you have to consciously choose our internal network over the campus network when connecting from within our lab!
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Hmm, so if you make a post titled "Interesting", it gets modded-up as Interesting. I wonder if this will work?
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
> Granted all I've found is that internet access
> in class just gives me a better way to not pay
> attention.
Then perhaps you're just a bad student. For the rest of us, it's another tool - just like a chalkboard, a desk, a calculator.
People don't pay attention in classes of all kinds - the presence of another learning tool seems, to me, to be just that - another tool.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
My university it #33. I don't have a laptop, but I know several people who do. In my experience, only the people who aren't paying for college with their own money can really afford a laptop.
That said, I wish students like me who can't afford a laptop didn't have to pay for the wireless network. After all, the university already spends a bunch of money on the computer labs, which are practically everywhere.
With the ammount that students at other univerisities pay, I can't really complaing about shelling out $3700/year, but when I started going here 4 years ago, it was only $2400. I wish the anministration would quite wasting money on new buildings and meaningless extravigance (like the wireless network, the new Rec Center, the new pool and whatnot) and spend the extra money I pay on maintining exixting structures. It's really frustrating that they're laying off teatures at the same time they're waisting millions of dollars on meaningless crap.
The last time I checked, wireless networks and rec centers didn't teach people. Maybe other people are here to party and dink around, but I'm here to learn.
They forgot a school with near-pervasive WiFi -- the library and admin building 100% and other areas are approaching rapidly.
Actually, if you check out the bottom of the page, you'll notice that they tell you how they came up with the list.
Its not based on volume, infact, they highered a third-party 'list maker' to come up with the list.
My school made the list, and we use Cisco stuff (almost?) exclusively.
--
Adam
www.punkmafia.com
"I am insane, and you are my insanity"
--Bruce Willis, 12 Monkeys
Of course you should all know by now that with an Intel Centrino notebook you can untangle your life. Browse the web from a mountain peak or fifty miles off the coast in the ocean. With Centrino you can do everything.
I normally don't use a laptop in class, as most of my coursework (Electrical Engineering) requires the good ol' pencil and paper. But in my singular business class, I take notes on it and of course, browse /.
However, it is nice to go to the library or sit outside, do some homework, and google things on the fly.
I doubt that availablity of a wireless network in some classrooms is doing much good, though. Oh well... the $400 yearly "technology fee" (earmarked for network upgrades) has to go somewhere, I guess...
University of British Columbia in Vancouver has a HUGE Wi-Fi network, but we cant be on that list because we're Canadian...1000 acre campus nearly completely Wi-Fi covered...see wireless.ubc.ca for details.
Who would have thought that Indiana would have to two top wireless campuses. A lot of this has to do with the money they state is currently putting into technology in all the colleges. Personally I am becoming a product of that in IU's Informatics program. To find out more about informatics check out www.informatics.indiana.edu. Anyways about the wireless on campus it ROCKS! Most every building and classroom on campus has wireless which allows students and staff to use their laptops and PDA's to get on to the internet via the schools VPN servers. In my obeservation being in various classes sometimes the connections are used for very practical purposes (Looking up lecture related content) and it is also abused for unpractical pruposes (AIM, Readin email, Playing games, etc). The library even allows students to check out laptops and go anywhere in the library to use them with the wireless. IU is a happening place when it comes to technology!
Agreed. I am a Ph.D. student at UNC-Chapel Hill, which placed just below the top 50, but as far as I'm concerned, the quality, consistency, and speed of wireless networking in the main library, for example, is absolutely superior. The implementation is really top-notch.
Does anyone (seriously) have information on what criteria were used to rank the schools?
Meanwhile, the rest of the world still uses tins and strings/smoke signals to communicate (apparently).
So the problem with surveys is that they require people's time to respond. For example, when I was a frosh the Princeton Review or someone conducted an online survery and one of the questions was about workload/free time. Now, if you think about it there are likely to be some freaking brilliant people that will say that they have plenty of free time and the work load isn't hard. Meanwhile, the other 99% of us aren't bored enough to fill out the survery. As a result we were ranked really low on the workload that year. And believe me, this week was the first week I've ever had an easy problem set (it took only 3 hours).
So back to the topic, where is my school? We have wireless in most of the lecture halls and some of the newer classrooms. It's not great but its good for simple browsing/IM/e-mail. From the way that you describe the wirelesss there, I would think that Caltech should be higher than "not on the list." There is none as of yet in the houses (not frats, campus owned dorms, but cooler) but that is because they are old Faraday cages that are going to be rebuilt so current wireless is student owned access points. So why the institute doesn't provide them, I can walk from one side of my house to the other and have access the whole time, switching from AP to AP.
In other words, the wireless access here is good in my opinion and surveys are pretty crappy means of advertising.
-Scott
This is bullshit. UTK has 130 buildings covered and is converting to full 802.11(bag) coverage in the summer, with a outdoor network to come real soon now. 1310 access points with over 8500 unique users. Hell, even the friggin Creamery on the Ag Campus has 4 APs. Bossy is fraggin' as I type. I imagine that all of the schools listed have bought some Intel product to qualify. We don't use their stuff so....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Cal state northridge offeres free wifi for students. Im a CS major so I spend most of the time in the CS buildings and they are littered with access points down every hall and every floor. Great reception inside and outside. The rest of the campus has to share APs located on the south end of campus. Coverage is spotty, especially in the library where most cheap equipment wont pick up anything. None of the science or art buildings are covered.
OTOH, the distinction is probably less useful for undergrads, who usually don't get the kind of mindnumbing detail that we have to put up with on a daily basis.
Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like you're in the shower. Fuck like you're being filmed.
I go to Purdue, and I think it's great that we are "unwired" but does it strike anyone else as funny that Indiana has the top 2 "unwired" schools? I mean seriously, Indiana isn't exactly known for it's technological prowess. . . IU can be the most wired, but at least our basketball team didn't totally tank this year. Whoo!
I don't have time to make a sig
I was disgusted but not surprised to find that A&M didn't even make the list. It seems that there is no priority to improve connectivity, from problems finding free network plugs in grad offices to pentium IIs in engineering computer labs (yes, there are fights over the one p4 in my major's computer lab, and our sys admin has two 19in flat panels to boot). It's really a tragedy that A&M is one of the largest universities in the world and yet cannot seem to even keep up with schools like Baylor.
I know Intel means well, but 'Most Unwired Campuses' has a negative ring to it. I'm pleased to see my school Case Western Reserve U on the top 4. The first to notify me of the placement was the school newspaper. After reading the headline that included the word 'Unwired,' I was shocked. How could Intel call my uni low-tech after installing round after round of wireless extensions, with 802.11g being planned for installation this summer. After reading further, I realised my mistake. Still, c'mon Intel, hire a copy editor before mailing out your results.
Yea hes happy to see purdue at two... but not as happy as we are to see prudue at number two.
;)
(btw for those of you who might go to that school, I go to IU)
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
Well I know that Case Western has been busted at least once in the past for goosing the numbers on a similar "study" about most wired campuses. To be fair they HAVE put a lot of money into networking since then. For instance they have Gbit to every drop on campus. Another high ranker is University of Akron, and unless your major is Polymer Chemistry or one of a few related disciplines it probably isn't on your list of top schools. The only reason UofA is on the list is that they are near Cisco-Aironet and so they got a bunch of equipment and support setting up their wireless network.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I've lived in Lafayette/West Lafayette all my life and I don't see hardly any difference between the two besides a shitload of retarded fratboys, high school skaters pretending to be college students, and hordes of Indian exchange students.
There was a large ad campaign that supposedly touted wireless access within the library and the ILC (integrated learning center....ballyhooed name for underground classrooms if you ask me ;) ) Anywho, the campus uses a Cisco VPN dialer to authenticate everyone via their email ID and password. The whole thing is rather shoddy, as the VPN dialer rarely works as it should. Often, logging in leads to a short-lived connection, and then the VPN dialer returns an error of "VPN subsystem lost"...Repeated attempts afterward to get back online wirelessly fail. Really a worthless system if you ask me, as I go around with an ethernet cable to get a connection anywhere on campus...
I go to gaTech currently which is #100 on that list which I guess is alright. We have a number of buildings wired, all of which are where my classes are, including some of the reasearch buildings the bookstore the starbucks in the bookstore, and more of the eateries that are near the above mentioned research building.
What I tend to use wireless for in class is runing experiments for class projects where I can communicate with other group members during class via AIM, additionally in another class I use it to do the individual projects, the use of the wireless here is that I run CVS on my desktop computer, and need access to it when I'm in class. It's a nice little system. As for my other class I usually just do work for the two previous classes in it and not really pay attention
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Hey! I worked at both schools in Columbia, MO that were listed. A pretty nice town overall. Stephens College is about 90% female so I suggest all geek boys sign up today.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I attend Vanderbilt University, and it's pretty far down. We *don't* have wireless in the larger lecture halls for the express reason that students would goof off on the Internet instead of paying attention. Also, there is very little outdoor coverage. Even our main engineering complex only has specific floors covered, simply because it is a huge complex (and the third level is the ground level). I rather fail to see how we ranked at all, unless there are only 100 colleges in the US with wireless!
Then again, they also ranked my hometown 100th in the list of most unwired cities, and until January, I had *never* come across a wireless access point in that city. Ever. (Recently, an Internet cafe opened up near the movie theatre with wireless access for free with purchase...)
Dartmouth got number five. I don't know how access gets any better than at Dartmouth, where you can get a guaranteed signal over 100% of the entire campus, including all the dorms, all academic buildings, all open parks and greens, all the streets, performance halls, dining halls and study spaces, parking lots... everywhere.
The only place you can't get a signal is in the physics labs where the scientists were rightfully worried about interferance with experiments.
So anyway I don't know what my point is. I guess the top four schools must have some sweet wireless.
(for initial testing) and opened it up to everyone in 98. Drexel started in 2k.
I currently attened Purdue University on the campus of Indiana University in South Bend, IN. There is only one building that I am aware of that has wireless available to students. I could be wrong, but I just thought it was ironic that Ind is #1 and Purdue is #2.
UVSC - Utah Valley State College
.. Summer School..
Im starting there in 2 weeks
Well this campus is very well WireLESS. Some spots are a little weak, while other spots you may be able to pick up 10+ APs. Also you can connect from most of the parking lots.
Pretty much every classroom has full Wireless access available.
Holy crap, i cant believe im going to the same school as cowboy neal, definetly time to switch
... and I asked him about this very same topic. Funny, because he said "Have you seen the Intel article about the most wired college campuses?" Of course, I hadn't at the time and forgot to look it up. Then, bam, on Slashdot two days later.
I asked him to compare our setup and implementation to our peer universitites and he basically said that we were right at the top. We've had full coverage on campus for three semesters (counting back including this one). Before that they rolled it out over three semesters. So, it's been on campus for about 3 yrs now. Kinda cool.When ITAP (the IT services dept) decided to do it, they actually rolled together three other independant implementations from the School of Mgmt and a couple of other places. In addition to full campus coverage, now we even have wireless access at our footbal stadium (with a ton of money donated by Cisco and other companies) that can be used to access stats, etc. during the game - mostly from PDAs.
Funniest part of the story from the VP of IT was that when he told us that IU was number 1 on the list. Apparently, after Purdue had rolled out wireless across the campus (or was partly through implementation), IU called and asked how they did it and copied the setup. He said that they beat us on 'green space'. IU's physical campus is spread out over a larger area than Purdue's. IU covered the green space and nudged us out.
... has most of it's main campus wired for wireless, but requires a proprietary Windows-only client to login to it. So at first glance it seems alrightish, but upon closer examination, sucks the llama's ass.
No matter where you go, there you are; even before you arrive.
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus isn't even listed, even though they have most of the buildings covered by wireless. Other people seem surprised their institution is even listed, given that they have very limited wireless access.
Given major omissions like this, I take the survey with a very LARGE grain of salt. For some reason they base the survey on number of students, number of computers, and computer/student ratio. Sorry, but when I think of being "unwired", I think "what's the likelyhood that I can get a wireless connection in any given building? The number of people around me has little to do with that, and the number of computers in the university has almost nothing to do with that. Those might be important numbers to use in other surveys of techno-ability, but they're meaningless in a ranking of wireless access.
AccountKiller
92nd! What? The competition must be pretty darn steep. I know that here many of the departments here at the University of Washington run wireless networks in their buildings, the libraries all have public wireless and many of the large outside public areas (HUB Lawn, Engeneering Quad, Central Plaza) as well. I make good use of the wireless ... it lets me read /. during class.
Only reason I can think of is that they only went wireless this school year, but now that they are wireless, every building on campus is wireless, and about the only place that doesn't have wireless access is the soccer fields, which are quite a hike from everything else.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
I'd be very interested in how Canadian universities fit into that list. At UBC you can get pretty consistent access across the entire campus (its a pretty big campus). If you know what you're looking for you can even see some of the hardware in one of the pubs on campus.
If only you could say the same about your basketball team =)
-Matt
Duke '05
where are all of these ppc's you speak of? also, a potential reason that duke is not on the list is that our campus is over 8500 acres. although main west/east are covered, i doubt the duke forest is =)
-Matt
Duke '05
I go to UT-Austin, and we're up there on the list for wireless access (rightly so). The submitted nailed it on the head though - laptops are pretty common now among CS students, but most people use them to do just about anything other than pay attention in class.
I have one heavy programming class where I definitely wish I had a laptop to take notes, as the professor will often throw up examples it'd be nice to compile on the fly during lecture... of course, he posts the code that evening on the class website....
Anyway, I suppose its neat to be able to connect to the internet from anywhere on campus, but I dont think its a boon to productivity or terribly helpful. Pretty much anywhere I might consider bringing a laptop to work on a programming project/paper/etc has a computer lab in it already, and I dont think there many students/profs/faculty who need to check their e-mail every 5 minutes, or while eating at the food court, etc.
I wonder how 'unwired' other universities in the world are?
Here at Berkeley(didn't make the cut) the wireless is pretty darn good, and fast improving (due to a grant from HP).
I'm rarely without a signal, and often surprised at its location/strength. I don't have experience with some of the areas on campus, but all the important buildings (math/cs/ee) are well covered. They also reciently installed WAP's in select dorm lounges. (Of course i already put a 802.11g router in my room, so i won't be taking advantage of that any time soon)
So i was quite surprised not to find us listed.
Perhaps, given that this ranking was provided by intel, and many many people here use macs (i'd say about 1/2) we were "conveniently" skipped. Some of our sister schools (of similar size/attendance - eg. #14 UCI, #16 UCR) were not...
*dons tin foil hat*
then again, maybe their wireless is simply that good. (Anyone from those schools to confirm?)
Anyway i can't stay, have to get back to watching a lecture webcast(.rm), since i was too distracted with my laptop in class to pay attention. *sigh*
cheers,
graham
PS-yes, my CS prof does speak deliberately and look like an elf. He's canadian.
It's time to separate the weak from the chafed, the men from the boys, the awkwardly feminine from the possibly Canadian
I know a few of the schools lower on the list are mainly Apple-based, so it's nice to see that they weren't excluded from Intel's list.
Alex.
I'd like to know on what basis they state that the airports are unwired.
I travel in and out of O'Hare regularly, and I'm not aware of any wireless service available to the unwashed. Perhaps wireless is available in the airline club lounges, but that hardly counts as "airport" access.
By contrast, I was in KC Mo last month, a much smaller airport than O'Hare, though with a very cool design in my opinion, and their wireless access was both publicly available, and clearly announced on their PA screens.
Who cares about getting school work done if you are well-off enough to be able to afford a laptop at school!
UCLA was also, irnocially, very slow to get a Web site.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The biggest advantage of Wireless that I saw on my campus came when some of my friends found out that certain access points on campus didn't have the bandwitdh shapers in place. That meant my friends with laptops would make frequent trips to these areas to do homework and download from the normally slow P2P apps.
Incidentally my alma matter ranked 17th on the list. That's not surprising as they were making a significant push towards setting up the wireless network my last couple of years there.
Oh yeah, one other interesting use: wireless cable TV. One of my friends had a TV tuner in his Linux box in his dorm. So... log into the X server remotely from his laptop and bingo! Wireless cable TV. Pretty neat trick. (Too bad he was too responsible to actually watch the TV during class...)
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
why is this such a big deal when cell phone providers sell wireless access fairly inexpensive?
The wireless here is pathetic. When I first moved in, it was down all the time and MAC addresses were being randomly blocked.
To rub salt in the wound, they refused to provide support for Linux or any non-Orinoco or Intel card. I even heard somewhere that they've blocked all non-Orinoco/Intel MAC addresses (which, IMO, should be illegal as a form of collusion).
I never did get my Orinoco Silver USB adapter working on my Linux box, at the time running Mandrake 9.1.
My roommates and I very quickly gave up on the wireless here and got a cable modem. Comcast still sucks, but it's far better than UTD's wireless.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Maybe a nitpick, but why can't they just use postal state abbreviations? Are they really catering to people who don't know that "CA" = "Calif." and "OK" = "Okla."
Wow... Clemson is on the list.
:).
This is very strange because the network here is fscked up (save for the cs, ece branches
btw. the wap key is:
a1234567890bc1234567890def
Where is Virginia Tech? When I started in 1998 we were the most wired campus in the nation. By the time I left (yes, 4 years later) Tech had started to introduce wireless. Come on guys, who dropped the ball?
This has been discussed countless times here on Slashdot, and none but those in very deliberate denial, (cowards), have not reached a place where they do not realize that there are risks involved; that there is a real phenomenon at work.
Have you noticed that there are no student protests about the hell being perpetrated upon the world by the U.S. military industrial complex? I have. Kids are simply not aware, or they are too numbed out by all the forces assaulting them, (anti-depressants, chemical food, EM pollution, toxic media), to be able to react the way an unhampered human would normally be able. There was a time when political awareness was a significant part of youth culture; where it affected foreign policy. It had an effect!
Cell phones annoy me, but at least people have the choice as to whether or not to use them. Campus wide wireless highspeed networks however. .
Ah well. It's not like universities are bastions of free thought anymore. Get out while you still can.
Choice is everything. Most people will choose to ignore; to go back to sleep. To believe the lies. These people are going to get eaten. Screw 'em. I have no pity for cowards.
Wireless communication is one of the three pillars of the electronic opiate of the masses. Along with Television and computer games, wireless technology limits your ability to question and think. They drain energy, very directly limiting awareness. News Flash: You need a high level of energy if you are going to be able to perceive events happening on higher levels of reality. If this sounds weird to you, it simply means you are among the ignorant. Sorry. It's true. It's your job to get with the program, and munching on poisonous food, radiating your head with cell technology and vegging in front of 'Survivor' is not the way to do it.
Good luck out there.
-FL
Um, while that might be true, IU still has had a strong IT history. I'm sure Purdue does as well. But speaking as someone who goes to IU, worked as a sysadmin at the ISP that cooperates with IU for off-campus wireless in Bloomington, and someone who knows several IT people at IU, they are truely one of the frontrunners. Almost every building and room has wireless access. Most rooms even have their own AP. Plus, IU spends a lot of time and money on wireless research and development.
And coming in at number 50, the University of Missouri - Columbus.
I just wonder where Columbus, MO is, and how the 5th UM campus escaped my knowledge all these years. Because while I've found the wifi service here in Columbia Missouri quite good, I guess we didn't make the list.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
True, UTK has good wireless coverage in academic buildings, but there isn't coverage in the dorms. I haven't actually been in a dorm since 1999, but according to the campus maps, none of the living areas have wireless. This may be why UTK didn't make the list. (I think I read a statistic that UT is one of the top schools with wireless APs coming in at 1,600.)
If it's really done by percentage, where is Columbia? Their campus is about four blocks, and all useful parts of their campus are covered.
Also, why isn't Dartmouth ranked first? The ones ranked above them must have more than 100% coverage.
... considering reception on most Centrino laptops I've encountered is garbage compared to what I get on my iBook (my favourite incident was when the local Microsoft evangelist would have Windows bluescreen on him whenever a wireless network was detected - GO CENTRINO! :D)
The University of Toronto is doing fairly well, considering the hugeness of the campus. Here for more info.
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
Nebraska Wesleyan is not a big school, but has great wireless coverage...coverage I hardly ever see students taking advantage of. It seems to be a very well-kept public secret.
Honestly, considering the coverage and that Creighton in Omaha made the list, I'm surprised not to see Nebraska Wesleyan here.
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
I work full time in the IT department at Geneseo. We've pushed out a lot of wireless, but there's always demand for more. Wireless is like crack here... Even one of our bars has two APs in it!!
While we don't rank as high on it, Forbes also has a Wireless Ranking
I'm curious how my college (West Virgina University) made the list (#51). Did any college that has a wireless access point anywhere on campus get listed?
Wireless is only available in a select few locations on campus (and I think one of the residential buildings, because it's a leased apartment building and they weren't allowed to run ethernet). And in the places where it is offered, such as the library, it is only usuable via the laptops you can check-out from the library. When I asked for the WEP key so I could use my own laptop, the answer I got from multiple librarians was, "What's a WEP key?", and they had no idea how I could get access.
The Computer Science department supposedly offers wireless access. I filled out the "application for access" six months ago, I still haven't been given the WEP key or assigned an IP address. I was told the program was still "experimental", despite the wireless LAN in that building being around for several years now.
It would be nice if WVU was one of those colleges that had Wi-Fi campus-wide, then I might actually be able to make some productive use of my laptop. As it stands now, almost nobody brings their laptops to class or uses them in between classes, because of the lack of functional network hookups in most places on campus.
I am a long time IT staff member at Purdue. Both Purdue and our sister institution IU (120 miles to south) have strong a strong commitment to IT infrastructure. As one example, the universities own fiber cable between themselves, IUPUI in Indy with expansion to other Indiana universities being planned. Currently we have this lit up at 1 Gbps and will soon be 10 Gbps. Basically this means that any computer at IU is as 'close' to my desk PC as any computer at Purdue itself. My group has a permanent open link to some databases at IU. Formerly we had to have a local copy of the databases. Purdue & IU have been able to link their supercomputer nodes together into one giant cluster. Much fun although policies and software implementations keep us from doing this for any more than a demo.
Never-the-less, there are enough holes our wireless coverage to make me question the validity of the rankings. Can we walk between buildings while holding a signal like other universities? No. Parts of the WTHR chemistry building -- granted the rarely used areas -- do not have a signal in them. I believe that we are in the top but to rank universities by an arbitrary #1, #2, etc. is, well, arbitrary.
As for use of the wireless. I do not see a whole bunch of people using it however I do find people in 'wet labs' (i.e., working with chemicals & biologicals) using their laptops on the lab bench. Very useful especially when you need to lookup database information in the middle of reaction. People do use laptops for notes in a meeting. I personally use my Tungsten C Palm -- not officially supported but that is because the central IT people don't like it -- to read email and /. in boring seminars.
This has got to be a joke. Last I knew, the only academic building on our campus that lacked access to the WLAN was our Liberal Arts building. I'm pretty sure they resolved that anyways.
But seriously, almost EVERY other building (except for the dorms/apartments) have school-owned AP's with great coverage everywhere. Hell, I picked up an excellent signal from the library and checked the bus schedule from the bus stop last year. You've gotta be kidding me.
SUNY schools have better wireless access? Get real.
Just something I forgot to mention in my above post: UTD set up the wireless in the apartments in the most asinine way possible. The access points were set up in the breezeways in the buildings and outside the apartments. This was made even worse because the access points had incredibly weak signals, and attempting to use the wireless in an apartment was a chore because the signal kept dropping, and when it was there, it was weak.
I don't think I ever got anything better than 35% signal strength, and that was if I was very lucky.
And in case that didn't make things clear, the ``it was down all the time'' in my above post was an exaggeration. It did work from time to time, but it was down as often as it was up (thank you, weak signal), and when it was up, it was incredibly spotty due to the ultra-weak signals. Then, my MAC address was blocked at random, which happened to many other people including my roommates (I was the last of my roommates that got blocked tho...guess I was just lucky), and that was around the time we decided to just screw the wireless and get cable.
Cable's better though. It's guaranteed to work with any Ethernet card, no ports are blocked, and we get a public IP address so we can run servers (ditching my hosting provider and setting up Apache was one of the best things I ever did). With UTD's wireless, hardware support is horrid, a large amount of ports are blocked (they even had IRC blocked, for Zod's sake), and there's no public IP.
Oh, and there's one thing I did notice about UTD's networking: in the brand-new School of Management, one of the lecture halls (maybe more...I've only been in one) has Ethernet jacks built into all of the desks (along with electric sockets, of course). Since I don't have a laptop, I can't verify if they work, but it does show that there's some hope that UTD will come to their senses and set up wired networks everywhere else on campus and in the apartments.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
I didn't really hear much at all about it until 96. When did the beta start?
Couldn't a Uni use an ad something like : "Can you ping me now?" ;-)
The correct city would be Columbia. This error is simply shameful.
Furthermore, I find this "best" list to be a bit disingenous as I am certain that not every university in the nation was considered.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
Actually your student fees did not fund any wireless deployment or anything related to campus computing whatsoever.
All wireless hardware and deployment costs have been paid for via grants from day one of the UCR wireless deployment project back before I was hired as a full time staff member.
And as far as campus computing, we don't get one cent over here in Student Computing Services from student fees or tuition. The only reason we've been able to deploy new computers in selected labs each year recently is because we received a 4-year grant (which ends next year I believe). So I don't know where that leaves us (SCS) when the money dries up.
But I digress. Go UCR!
-----
Jonathan Glenn L. Ocab
Technical Consultant, Student Computing Services
University of California, Riverside
jonathan.ocab at ucr.edu | ocabj at ocabj.net
The University of Tennessee actually has one of the largest wireless networks in the United States. With over 1250 AP's the entire campus is covered in a wireless grid. How intel missed it I have no idea.
presmike
yea i know you.
If you remember like 2 years ago, I posted with advice on how to overcome the D-lin DWL 650 driver issues (prisim2 chipset) by using the samsung drivers.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Funny that OC doesn't make the list seeing as how the entire campus has been covered with wireless internet access for over 3 full years now. Additionally, for three years they have provided brand new laptops for every student and faculty member.
Granted OC is a small student body of only 1500 students.
On a side note, we use Intel centrino products and thus should be more than qualified for the list.
hmmmm... I don't recall that.
But, driver problems on the client end aren't that common anymore, thankfully.
The main problem we see is client ignorance. It's pretty funny when a student comes in with help to configure a PCMCIA wireless card when they have a built-in wireless adapter and didn't know about it. But the humor is lost when it takes 10 minutes to explain to that person that they don't need the PCMCIA wireless adapter because of the built in one.
actually, its compounded worse by people at worst buy and the likes when they tell them "you need this card for wireless"
so they end up getting a 2nd wlan nic.
I don't know if its salesman stupidity (possibly be, because if you look at how unknowledgeable some car salesmen are) or they are motivated by comission (which car salesmen are...want a v6 instead of the 4?)
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Indiana University (my employer) and Purdue University (where I got my undergrad degree) have a joint institution in Indianapolis called Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis or IUPUI (where I work and take grad courses). I found it shocking that a joint venture between the two top rated doesn't even rank. None the less, as someone from IUPUI (or Indian in general)it makes me proud to see IU and PU listed as the top two, especially considering that Indiana is far from what I would consider a high-tech state, rather to the contrary actually. Indiana is still a farming state to some degree. Purdue is actually known for two things: engineering and agriculture. Go figure.
If you can't just be yourself, then be more like me, ok?
"The data was collected from university interviews and documents, and a variety of industry sources." I'm to ASU in the computer science dept. (yes, we aren't all communications majors here. Shocking, isn't it?), and all of our engineering buildings give wireless access. Boo to intel for not sharing their statistics so I can hunt down every WAP on campus.
should be
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
WOO HOO My school is #41
We're number 41, we're number 41!
"It's" is the contraction of "it is". "Its" is the posessive form of "it".
I work at Purdue and have to listen to these semi-literate wankers every day. When did the word "like" become an adverb? ("She was like drunk!")
Sure, the education sucks at Seton Hall. I'll vouch for that. They're all about image, and don't give a crap about the students.
But they do spend oodles of money on tech crap to help with that image they want, so I could definitely see them on this sort of list despite the fact that the university itself sucks.
Dude, no harm intended. I wasn't knocking anyone. I know IU has a good IT/MIS program and for both of our schools to be at the top of this list requires competence. I was just relaying what the VP of IT talked to us about since it provided direct insight to the top two schools on the list.
Also, IU's campus having more access points or a higher concentration was exactly why their setup was considered better than ours. I think that the VP of IT would have at least some insight as to the nature of the relationship/colaboration between the IT depts. of each school, which by the way, he said was very good.
Here at Drexel U., #22 and the nation's first fully wireless campus. We should be #1! They obviously did not count the additional nodes from the huge 802.11g network students have set up repeating eachother's connections in dorms. [http://www.dangrossman.info]