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Wireless Everything at Dartmouth

Posted by timothy on from the breaking-ties dept.

hende_jman writes "Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire is condensing its phone, cable TV, and Internet services all into Wi-Fi, as reported by the New York Times (free registration required). The project, which started in 2001, has added 1400 WAPs and 24,000 wired ports. All that, and cost effective too."

8 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. this seems dumb by eobanb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wireless purely for the sake of wireless is just a stupid idea. I'm assuming they pretty much already have most of the infrastructure they need. Don't the dorms and offices and classrooms already have phone lines??? Also, the bandwidth of Wi-Fi is puny compared to gigE, which is what is required for some on-campus applications like streaming video (I'm a student at IU and we do things like that sometimes). Plus there's the whole security problem. This just seems like one big joke...

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    1. Re:this seems dumb by buelba · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >Wireless purely for the sake of wireless is just a stupid idea.

      There is an incredible convenience to wireless that you're omitting here. Just within my own house, I absolutely adore the ability to use my laptop in the office, kitchen, back yard, etc. This is *worlds* better than having to plug in.

      Multiplying this same convenience across a college campus -- to outdoor use, informal study groups in first-floor rooms, empty classrooms, etc. -- would be amazing. I wish I were 18 again.

    2. Re:this seems dumb by darthtrevino · · Score: 2, Insightful
      True, but I think the heart of the issue is what the big broadcasting and telco companies fear most: mass internet convergence.

      Imagine when your internet comes through municipal sources (or power lines for arguments sake).

      Your television programming, following the lead of films, are on demand and delivered via the internet. Your phone is VOIP, delivered over the internet. Cable and telephone companies are up the river on content delivery and service providing. The reason they are fighting municipal wi-fi is because their long term existence has been threatened by the power of the internets. ;-)

    3. Re:this seems dumb by hanssprudel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Do we have any evidence that they are really replacing all wired ethernet by wireless? It sounds to me like if the Dartmouth PR department and the NYT are putting the emphasis on the latest buzzword technology. The article does say, after all, that they have added 24,0000 ethernet ports as well.

      I am not a student there, so I cannot say but it sounds more like what they have actually done is put phone and TV/video service into the IP based network - both wired and wireless - so as to simplify maintance. This is a great convergence of technology that many companies are going for as well. It was just that moving "Going all Wi-Fi" sounded a lot cooler to the NYT (and our dear Slashdot editors...)

  2. Research Institutions by lake2112 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Research based institutions like Dartmouth like to be the first to do things. The prestige of being completely wireless is not to provide convenience, but to allow them to be one of the first to do something.

  3. No, it's wireless CABLE TV by winkydink · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now there's an oxymoron if I've ever seen one.

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  4. Let me get this straight by mattmentecky · · Score: 4, Insightful

    TFA:

    Hardware: Wireless Everything at Dartmouth Wireless Networking
    Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 04, @01:00PM
    from the breaking-ties dept.
    hende_jman writes "Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire is condensing its phone, cable TV, and Internet services all into Wi-Fi, as reported by the New York Times (free registration required). The project, which started in 2001, has added 1400 WAPs and 24,000 wired ports. All that, and cost effective too."

    Guess it depends what your definition of "wireless" and "everything" is.

  5. Re:Everything? by CyberDave · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not to mention that that aggregate bandwidth of 11 Mbps or 54 Mbps is the bandwidth provided at the raw physical layer. Even when you get to layer 2, you lose a lot of that bandwidth due to all ACKs at the MAC layer, the various timers (inter-frame delays). Then add on top of that the retransmission of lots frames due to interference and you're down to less than 10 Mbps of bandwidth. I've seen data from Vivato that indicates that you get even less than that (around 5 Mbps) in real-world conditions on a 802.11g network. That's about 10% usable bandwidth. Shared. That's not nearly enough. That's enough for maybe one TV channel and nothing else. And don't get me started on the latency...