Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Our new wireless network had its first "scale" test and...

Last week, the school held a workshop located in Holy Angel Hall.  Other teachers/members from surrounding schools were also in attendance.

I received a request to open the new wireless network to the participants.  Given that we had just installed our new high speed, fiber optic Internet connection, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to test the design/scalability of our new wireless network and Internet connection.

When we were designing the wireless network, we designed it to accommodate up to 100 devices in each classroom and up to 400 devices in Holy Angel Hall.  This seems like an excessive amount but as newer mobile/computing devices are mostly wireless, we felt it wise to plan for more wireless devices as Wi-Fi is becoming the de-facto standard for network connectivity (for now at least).

When the workshop was occurring, we monitored the entire wireless system.  The wireless system had approximately 65 devices total with 60 of them just in Holy Angel Hall.

Our wireless system is quite sophisticated in that we're able to determine what type of wireless devices were operating, with the predominate device being, not surprising, the iPad.  Other devices appearing were iPhones, Android devices, Windows and Mac computers - full spectrum of devices.

At the end of the workshop, the wireless system maximum utilization was under 3% and the maximum utilization of the new Internet connection around 10% of total capacity.  Our new wireless system and Internet connection performed flawlessly.

As teachers and students want to introduce technology into the classroom, the St. Phillip computing infrastructure is now officially ready.