Wireless takes off

Please make a Ruckus, we’re studying

Students living at Murdoch University can expect the same or better wireless internet for learning and socialising than they would get at home

Heightened user expectations were at the top of Chad Daly’s mind when scoping the requirements for his employer’s wi-fi wireless access network.

As general manager of Murdoch University Village in WA, Daly caters to 800 students living on campus in the city’s south, about two-thirds of whom are used to faster, cheaper, more reliable broadband back home than what Australians typically get.

When students make a decision where to study and stay, internet access and affordability are key criteria, Daly says. Campus Living Villages, the accommodation company, competes with third- party wireless providers for students’ business.

“The quality of internet is a huge decision because it’s a basic to be able to study and there’s a massive social aspect to that as well; a need and want to be able to Skype” with friends and relatives back home, Daly says.

He chose BigAir because the accommodation provider already had relationships with the service provider, one of Australia’s largest providers of wireless services and a network carrier, and because the service was affordable and within the means of the students.

Over four weeks last summer, BigAir rolled out 123 Ruckus ZoneFlex 7343 802.11n access points to 170 residential units and much of the village’s three hectare site including common areas such as the lounge and outside pool.

After a settling in period of a few months when speeds were about two to three megabits a second, each user now gets speeds of 15 to 25 megabits a second without contention, says BigAir general manager Jean Morel.

A key selling point for Ruckus is the phased array of seven internal antennas in each access point that locks on to a device and follows it as it moves around. Users log on once and as they move between access points, their internet follows them without the need to re-authenticate.

For BigAir and the end user, manageability was paramount, Morel says. “Our head office was in Sydney, so it was critical the solution was rock solid and could be remotely managed,” he says.

The Ruckus ZoneDirector 3150 wireless LAN controller is the 

brains behind the network, providing security, location management, load balancing and airtime fairness to allow, for instance, uninterrupted voice calls. And with Ruckus’ SmartMesh networking, Ethernet cables don’t have to be laid to each access point, speeding deployment, the vendor says.

The first step was a predictive or simulated survey with Ruckus Zoneplanner. Then an operator walked the site with a trolley that held a Ruckus access point and a radio mast, taking readings.

Installing the wi-fi access points that look much like light fittings took four days, followed by another audit to tweak the settings. The process took about four weeks from commissioning to completion, says Murdoch Village’s Daly.

It’s a sign of its success that in two years the broadband pipe into the site has doubled to a symmetrical 80 megabits a second, most of it used for social applications.