I feel as a student of UTD, I should step in and offer a perspective as to why this generates such bitterness among the student body.
The 802.11 b network was first deployed 4 years ago when the wireless standard was fairly new. I used the wireless network for all of my freshman year and it was plagued with frequent disconnects and service outages. I think I lost connectivity for a period of 4-5 hours best case at least once a week that year. To give some data as to the quality of the connection, it was common among my roommates to see packet loss of 25 - 30 percent when the network functioned and pings in excess of 200 ms to web servers hosted in Dallas.
Consequently, I decided that connection was too unstable for my needs, so I began paying for DSL. I used a Netgear wireless b access point to share the connection with my roommates as the fire code is rather vague about running cat-5 about everywhere. We occasionally used the university wireless service that year and didn't experience difficulty in switching between my private network and the university public network.
I currently run an 802.11 b/g network in the Waterview Park Apartments and I know for a fact
that it does not interfere with the University ran access points. I have worked on my neighbors computers regarding their connectivity to the University wireless network and they all can connect correctly. My AP is roughly 3 meters from the University AP and they don't not interfere with each other beyond a marginal hit to signal-to-noise ratio.
I have a decent level of security on my network through various methods and try my best to run a stable, non-interfering network and seem to be succeeding.
The real issue is that UTD has had a very unstable network since its inception and the instability of this network drives students to pursue other commerical options. The letter we recieved is full of accusations that the sole reason for having a private connection is to share illegal material. Also, the implicit allegation is that the non-university APs interfere with the intergrity of their network. I think no one will deny that some illegal traffic does proceed over the private lines. The non-university APs, however, are not the issue preventing the network from working correctly. The issue is in the quality of equipment and setup of the network.
I had a class where they discussed with the UTD IR department regarding how the university wireless network is setup. The setup is as follows.
Each apartment building has approximately 12 aps for the clients. These APs are then wired to a radio transmitter on the roof of each building. These transmitters send to a repeater for roughly 15 apartments each. I believe there are 8 or 9 of these repeaters now. This repeater passes its signal to a central receiver which is then wired directly to the main university fiber lines. I strongly feel that any network using that many radio signals to send data around is asking for poor throughput and reliablity.
After extensively thinking about this article, I believe this is a FUD campaign by UTD IR to get rid of poorly configured access points operating in the same frequency range as their network. The 802.11 standard is supposed to be robust enough to handle interference from multiple radio signals within the same vicinity. I don't feel I and other apartment residents like me should be the spacegoat for UTD's wireless internet problems. It is not our fault.
Wireless clients have the capability to recognize an access point as beloning to a certain SSID and connect to access points reflecting that SSID. My ssid is not broadcast and wireless clients should not be attempting to connect to my network for any reason.
I hope I have made it clear that UTD's claims do not stand up to the reality of how the 802.11 standard is implemented.
They have a history of a poorly performing network and this new campaign isn't going to change that problem. UTD IR needs to look at the real problem, the quality and design of their network infrastructure before turning the students into scapegoats.
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You post is what I was getting at in mine. Well said.
I've disabled my ssid broadcast so short of an apartment by apartment search, they should have difficulty finding it.
I feel as a student of UTD, I should step in and offer a perspective as to why this generates such bitterness among the student body. The 802.11 b network was first deployed 4 years ago when the wireless standard was fairly new. I used the wireless network for all of my freshman year and it was plagued with frequent disconnects and service outages. I think I lost connectivity for a period of 4-5 hours best case at least once a week that year. To give some data as to the quality of the connection, it was common among my roommates to see packet loss of 25 - 30 percent when the network functioned and pings in excess of 200 ms to web servers hosted in Dallas. Consequently, I decided that connection was too unstable for my needs, so I began paying for DSL. I used a Netgear wireless b access point to share the connection with my roommates as the fire code is rather vague about running cat-5 about everywhere. We occasionally used the university wireless service that year and didn't experience difficulty in switching between my private network and the university public network. I currently run an 802.11 b/g network in the Waterview Park Apartments and I know for a fact that it does not interfere with the University ran access points. I have worked on my neighbors computers regarding their connectivity to the University wireless network and they all can connect correctly. My AP is roughly 3 meters from the University AP and they don't not interfere with each other beyond a marginal hit to signal-to-noise ratio. I have a decent level of security on my network through various methods and try my best to run a stable, non-interfering network and seem to be succeeding. The real issue is that UTD has had a very unstable network since its inception and the instability of this network drives students to pursue other commerical options. The letter we recieved is full of accusations that the sole reason for having a private connection is to share illegal material. Also, the implicit allegation is that the non-university APs interfere with the intergrity of their network. I think no one will deny that some illegal traffic does proceed over the private lines. The non-university APs, however, are not the issue preventing the network from working correctly. The issue is in the quality of equipment and setup of the network. I had a class where they discussed with the UTD IR department regarding how the university wireless network is setup. The setup is as follows. Each apartment building has approximately 12 aps for the clients. These APs are then wired to a radio transmitter on the roof of each building. These transmitters send to a repeater for roughly 15 apartments each. I believe there are 8 or 9 of these repeaters now. This repeater passes its signal to a central receiver which is then wired directly to the main university fiber lines. I strongly feel that any network using that many radio signals to send data around is asking for poor throughput and reliablity. After extensively thinking about this article, I believe this is a FUD campaign by UTD IR to get rid of poorly configured access points operating in the same frequency range as their network. The 802.11 standard is supposed to be robust enough to handle interference from multiple radio signals within the same vicinity. I don't feel I and other apartment residents like me should be the spacegoat for UTD's wireless internet problems. It is not our fault. Wireless clients have the capability to recognize an access point as beloning to a certain SSID and connect to access points reflecting that SSID. My ssid is not broadcast and wireless clients should not be attempting to connect to my network for any reason. I hope I have made it clear that UTD's claims do not stand up to the reality of how the 802.11 standard is implemented. They have a history of a poorly performing network and this new campaign isn't going to change that problem. UTD IR needs to look at the real problem, the quality and design of their network infrastructure before turning the students into scapegoats.