Over the past several months, we have been receiving sporadic reports of connectivity issues on the wireless network. Examining the number of devices on the wireless network and the amount of data that is passing through it has revealed a large amount of broadcast and multicast traffic being sent out. This appears to come and go in waves, with some waves routinely peaking at over 500 packets per second of just this generalized service announcement traffic, effectively flooding the network to the point of noticeably degrading the users’ experience.

Kevin, Scott and Jamie have been working on developing a plan to accommodate device growth on the wireless network in a way that would reduce the negative impact of the ever-increasing number of devices and still provide a seamless user experience when moving from location to location on our campus. Testing of a new network design began last week (see Wireless Interface Addition post) and has been very successful.

The original implementation plan was to make the desired changes to the wireless network over the Christmas break period. However, over the past week, the reports of sluggish or unreliable connections have begun to rapidly increase, and we are concerned that the user experience during finals week could be quite poor if we don’t take action sooner. So we have decided to move up implementation of the new wireless network architecture to Tuesday, November 20th at 7:30 am.

The change will take only a few minutes to implement. Any devices on the wireless network at the time of the change will need to reestablish their connection in order to get a new IP address. If for some reason the change causes undesirable side effects, the change will be reversed and we will live with the current configuration until the end of the fall term.

If you have concerns about this change or how it may impact the work you do, or how it might impact the UIS community, please let Jamie Voyles know.

Thank you.

Curtis