Wi-Fi designed for a full lecture hall
Replacing average-case wireless design with high-density design, and segmenting a campus network that had grown without a plan.
- Client
- Private universityNamed once permission is confirmed
- Year
- 2024
- Duration
- 9 weeks
- Stack
- UbiquitiMikroTikFortinetMDT
Full occupancy
Verified capacity in every lecture hall
6 segments
Campus network, previously one
2 weeks → 40 min
Full lab rebuild
Planned
Refresh cycle, from an asset register
The situation
Campus Wi-Fi worked in corridors and failed in lecture halls the moment they filled. Students, staff, lab machines, cameras and building management shared one network. Computer labs were rebuilt by hand each semester, taking a technician most of a fortnight.
What we did
- 1Measured actual client density during a normal teaching week rather than designing from floor area
- 2Redesigned wireless for peak occupancy — more access points at lower power, tighter channel planning, band steering and per-client rate limits
- 3Segmented the campus into student, staff, lab, surveillance, building-systems and guest networks with policy between them
- 4Introduced network-based lab imaging, so a lab of forty machines restores between sessions
- 5Built an asset register with warranty and replacement dates to turn equipment refresh into a budget line
Average-case design fails in week one
The original installation was competent work against the wrong requirement. It was designed for coverage (can a device see the network?) rather than capacity (can three hundred devices in one room all use it?).
Those are different problems with different answers. Coverage design wants fewer access points at higher power. Capacity design wants more access points at lower power, with careful channel reuse so they do not interfere with each other.
We measured client counts through a normal teaching week, designed for the observed peak, then verified in the halls at full occupancy.
Six segments instead of one
A campus has the widest device variety and the least control over any of it. Personal laptops nobody manages, lab machines, cameras, projectors, building management, research equipment.
Splitting those into six segments with explicit policy between them was configuration work, not capital expenditure, and it converted the campus from one flat trust zone into something defensible.
Labs that reset themselves
The change that saved the most staff time was the least visible: one maintained golden image per lab, deployed over the network on demand.
A machine a student has broken is restored in minutes. The start of each semester is now a scheduled overnight task rather than a fortnight of a technician's life.
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