Updates on Campus Wi-Fi
With intermittent Wi-Fi service being characteristic of life on Saadiyat, the NYU Abu Dhabi IT Department, along with Facilities, is mounting a ...
Oct 31, 2015
With intermittent Wi-Fi service being characteristic of life on Saadiyat, the NYU Abu Dhabi IT Department, along with Facilities, is mounting a comprehensive replacement of all Wi-Fi routers on campus.
Originally, to counter connectivity issues, Wi-Fi modems had been placed in each of the residential lounges.
This new initiative, however, involves switching all 1650 routers across campus to new routers designed by Cisco.
This change is designed to increase availability and bandwidth and reduce the number of outages. It also allows NYUAD to make adjustments and updates to the system, rather than relying upon the original vendor.
The change-over will roll out over the next four months with minimal disruption to internet services on campus.
Patrick O’Brien, senior director of IT, noted that any conflicts will be avoided as best they can and that, due to the way hardware is engineered, the older routers will continue to provide Wi-Fi services until the new system is up and running.
The move to the new infrastructure was prompted by significant technical faults in Wi-Fi services that have occurred since the university moved to its campus on Saadiyat.
Normally, systems such as the Wi-Fi routers would last for at least five years; however, due to the ongoing issues, the routers are being replaced only one year after being installed.
Financially, the cost of this change was funded by Tamkeen, separately from IT’s operations budget, along with significant discounts from Cisco, the provider.
Once this project is complete, further expansion to the Wi-Fi service will seek to cover any places in which Wi-Fi is not currently accessible on campus. The aim of this next phase is to ensure that one can walk across the entire campus without losing a connection.
Connor Pearce is news editor. Email him at feedback@thegazelle.org.
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