> Do you provide a wireless ResNet in addition to wired,
Yes, in some areas. We already provide wired connections to all halls rooms, and initially deployed wireless only in "common areas" within halls (insofar as you can, given that it does also spill over into adjacent rooms).
However the demand has come from our commercial services people to have more coverage, particularly in the halls that are let out over the summer vacation. We've now got blanket coverage in two of the halls at South Ken, one which had already had the cabling installed at build-time, and one new-build which has had wireless installed from day one.
> If yes, what products, technology(s) are you using,
Exactly the same as the rest of the college network - Cisco Lightweight infrastructure carrying a WPA/WPA2-Enterprise network, eduroam, a web-redirect network for guests and "The Cloud" as a commercial service.
> Did the service create a significant increase in support load
Not significantly as it is exactly the same as the coverage elsewhere so students would have set up wireless connectivity for their laptops anyway.
There was some need to communicate that the coverage in the common spaces was not intended to cover all the hall, which obviously some students saw as unfair.
The wireless points in halls do see a decent level of use, so I guess the students find it convenient. We've had to include all wireless traffic from students into their (originally halls only) bandwidth quota as there is no way of reliably deciding if it's halls traffic or not as many of the residences are adjacent to other college buildings.
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Matt Balyuzi
ICT Networks Group
Imperial College London
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