Campus Wi-Fi Gets Major Upgrade

Wi-fi coverage expected to be boosted by the end of March.

Wi-fi has been the latest problem for the students as they face slow speed in certain places. To get what is going on in the campus, we talked with the Chief information officer, Debbie Rudderham and manager of the IT services, Ben Pickles. They told us that the old Wi-Fi system that was aging and was around 7 years old.

They did a survey in the campus to get to know where the access points (APs) need to be built to cover a wide range. A new Wi-Fi system needed to be setup not only because the current network system was aging but also because of the large influx of Indian students this year, as this increases the load on the network.

Ben said, “we did a site survey to know what shape we are in so that we know how many APs and of what strength are required. It was a pretty scientific method and after all the decision were made, we kicked off the project in November.”

Debbie pointed to the image and told us that before the project was started, we only had around 108 APs, but by the end of March (when the project is estimated to finish) we will have around 352 APs.

When asked about the biggest hurdles in this project, Debbie said, “Wi-Fi setup requires a lot of wires, so to set those up we have electricians who are working on contract basis. They are basically distributed into two groups, one group works with the wiring and once the wiring is done, second group comes in and hangs the APs (that is when the connection goes live). They are done with the busiest areas like library and cafeteria and there are already near to none complaints about the connection now.”

Ben added, “library and cafeteria needed very strong APs because it is supposed to be the busiest areas, also, the peak devices connected to the cafeteria APs on the lunar new year celebration were around 550.”

They have used the latest technology that can accommodate thousands of devices.

They’ll need it too, since the Canada Games Complex and the field house are now covered by the Wi-Fi network. Also, they will be able to accommodate a lot of devices when the field house is full during a game. Getting the wiring done there is the biggest challenge as they are open spaces.

This project costed Cape Breton University around half a million dollars.

There is also good news for the PUBG game players who are not able to play it in the campus area during their leisure time, IT services is open to requests. If you have something that you are not able to access, just email ‘helpdesk@cbu.ca’ mentioning what problems you are having, and they will investigate the matter and get the problem solved at the earliest. Your requests would not be considered if the site/game you want to have access to, makes you vulnerable as the safe internet usage is always the priority.