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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?"
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
Boy, you better learn yourself some comp sci history. Perhaps you've heard of this guy here.
Actually, at the U of I, almost every building on campus has Wireless Access Points. The only buildings that don't have WAPs are the dorms, because there are 11293840982734 jacks in the building anyways.
If U of I is only #33, I'd really like to see how good these other schools are. There is nothing like taking your laptop out on the lawn, and check your email and stuff.
www.punkmafia.com
"I am insane, and you are my insanity"
--Bruce Willis, 12 Monkeys
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!
I was afraid I would succumb to the same temptations, so I keep myself in terminal mode (out of X) while in class. I take my notes in nano. If we had wireless access, I think I'd pop into a special school desktop with office products and mozilla firebird at easy access, so I could do a little research during class and back up notes with anecdotal urls.
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/
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.
Nope, never heard of him. But Purdue has the first computer science program in the nation. Maybe the name "Spaf" rings a bell too?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
It took longer than I would've liked, but we have wireless on-site. Intel is overly cautious of the security of using wireless. Now that we have it, it sure is nice to be untethered. No more spaghetti cables on conference tables. I was surprised the Centrino in my T40 got such better reception than my Linksys card at home. And, yes, the dept pays a fee, but that's just bookkeeping.
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.
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.
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 a contractor at Intel. Yes there is a bit of red-tape to go through to get WiFi. I'd guess that maybe half of the people with issued laptops have Wifi and the rest still use cables.
;-) If they could get over their prejudice against anyting non-Intel, I suspect a lot of the people would be envious since the Powerbooks are so much nicer than what they're stuck with.... Ah, but alas, Intel doesn't seem like a 'think different' sort of place in my experience. It's more like a "let's all ignore the fact that anything else exists" sort of place.
I haven't been issued one of those new Centrino laptops yet (and probably won't be since I'm a contractor). I keep thinking about bringing in my Powerbook 17" and attending one of the ubiquitious meetings that Intel has. I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice
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.
Sounds like a problem with your equipment; a couple of my friends were able to pick up a signal from GCCIS all the way from Riverknoll. (For the non-RITers: an apartment complex near the comp sci building.)
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
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.
Indiana has tech. We have some excellent schools for teaching tech. As soon as a resident gets their degree, almost all immediately jump ship to another state for a job. What Indiana doesn't have is tech jobs. Year old article here