Spring Break
DU to upgrade DragonFly across campus
Marshall Fleming
Issue date: 7/25/08 Section: News
|
Aruba Networks was selected to take on the project that will fully upgrade DragonFly, Drexel's wireless network, for the first time since 2004.
"Last year we knew we would be starting the replacement cycle," Ken Blackney, associate vice president of IRT, said.
"We first implemented DragonFly in 2000 and replaced it in 2004 with Cisco gear, and we knew that in 2008 we would have to go again, first because this technology is sort of evolving faster than a lot of others and four years is really all you can get out of it, and second because there are some emerging web standards such as 802.11n which provide a lot more speed."
According to Blackney, the wireless network in residence halls is currently averaging about 70 users to each access point. The new network will cut that down to 12.5, which will also contribute to faster speeds.
The decision to select Aruba Networks as the company with which to move forward came after evaluating multiple companies and actually testing the networks of three companies.
"We decided that the three leaders and the companies that we were going to look at were Cisco…, Aruba Networks and a company called Meru Networks."
"We did our tech evaluations, and to see how it would work in real life we actually did testing in Caneris Hall and Race Street Residence with this gear. So we did several multi-week tests with each of the three vendors and took surveys of the students in those dorms to see what kind of difference it made compared to what was there before."
Blackney said that the feedback was that students in Caneris were the least happy with the old signal. "When we brought an outside firm in they said our DragonFly network is everywhere [in Caneris Hall], but so is the signal for 60 other networks [from individual networks within University Crossings]," he said. "The question is how do you get heard over all of that?"
Be the first to comment on this story