University wireless is a harder problem than office wireless, and the reason is density. An office floor might have one device per person spread across a large area. A lecture theatre has two hundred people in one room, most of them carrying a laptop and a phone, all connecting at the same time at the start of a session. Coverage is not the issue. Capacity is.
The brief
Install wireless infrastructure across university sites in London and the South East, covering lecture theatres, libraries, teaching spaces and halls of residence. The networks had to hold up under real teaching conditions, and the work had to fit around timetables rather than disrupting them.
Designing for devices, not floor area
A wireless design based on floor area will put too few access points in the rooms that need the most. We design around how many devices will be in each space and what they are doing, which usually means more access points at lower power in dense areas rather than a smaller number turned up high.
Turning power up sounds like it should help and generally makes things worse. Access points start interfering with each other, devices hold onto a distant access point instead of moving to a nearer one, and everyone experiences the network as slow.
Buildings themselves complicate this. Older university buildings have thick walls that stop signal dead. Newer ones have glass partitions and open atria that let it travel further than expected. Libraries have metal shelving. We survey each building rather than working from the floor plan alone.
Wireless is only as good as the cabling behind it
Every access point needs a cable back to a comms room, and that cable decides what the access point can actually deliver. We install the supporting structured cabling ourselves, which means the containment, the cable routes, the terminations and the power over Ethernet are all part of the same job.
Access points were mounted neatly and cabled on dedicated links. Where ceilings and walls were visible to students and staff, routes were planned so that the finished installation looked deliberate rather than improvised.
Working around teaching
Universities run to a timetable that does not move. Work was scheduled around teaching, with noisy or disruptive activity planned for periods when rooms were free. Our engineers are DBS checked, which matters on sites where students are present.
Testing and handover
Coverage was verified on completion rather than assumed from the design. A predictive survey tells you what should happen and an active survey tells you what actually happens once the building is full of furniture and people. Both have their place, and the second one is the one that settles arguments.
Each site was handed over with documented coverage results and records of the installed cabling, so the IT team knows what is installed and where it runs.
The result
Campus wide wireless across multiple university sites, designed for device density, supported by cabling installed by the same team, verified on completion and delivered around teaching timetables.
Planning a wireless project?
If a contractor quotes wireless without surveying the buildings, they are guessing, and the first complaint will arrive in the busiest room on site. We survey before quoting and we test before handing over.
Draft: institutions, access point numbers and dates to be confirmed before publication.