Benjy Egel
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Cal Poly’s reputation for cutting-edge technology was one of the main reasons business administration freshman Ted Scranton accepted his admission.
Since coming to San Luis Obispo, though, Scranton has been greeted by snail-paced start-up times from the campus’ Internet system, Secure Mustang Wireless.
“I’ve had problems connecting, especially in the big classrooms,” he said. “(It takes) 10 or 15 minutes of just continually sitting there, and then sometimes it’ll connect, then kick you off really quick.”
To fix this problem, Information Technological Services (ITS) switched its campus authentication systems Wednesday morning.
ITS switched from Cisco Systems, Inc. to Aruba Networks, which allows many more users to log on to Secure Mustang Wireless at the same time.
Aruba can authenticate more than 300 devices per second, while the old system was limited to about 100 connections per second, Director of Enterprise Systems Paul Jurasin said.
When ITS sent out a school-wide survey in the first week last year, 6,000 wireless devices were reported. This year, the same survey showed 14,000 devices, including smartphones, tablets and computers.
“A single person might have an iPhone, an iPad and a laptop with them, and all three of those need to authenticate into the network,” Jurasin said.
Wireless devices cannot connect to Secure Mustang Wireless outside of school buildings. Every time someone moves from one building to another, his or her devices must re-sync with the Internet.
“If you ever get wireless outside, it’s just leaking in from one of the buildings that has wireless,” Jurasin said. “When there’s lots of people walking into a building that has wireless, all those devices are automatically logging in at the same time.”
Aruba’s login capabilities should improve Secure Mustang Wireless’ speed, Jurasin said. Bandwidth speed, often associated with slow Internet, is not much of a problem with the new system.
Cal Poly switched from Mustang Wireless to Secure Mustang Wireless last year to protect users’ sensitive materials from being accessed by others.
On Mustang Wireless, users had to manually log in every time they wanted to access the Internet. Secure Mustang Wireless’ automatic connection causes devices to sync once being turned on, resulting in more simultaneous connections and slower Internet speed.
Jurasin said Cal Poly hopes to implement an outside Wi-Fi network at some point.
“When wireless was first put in on campus by the CSU … what was funded was to put wireless in the buildings,” he said. “It wasn’t funded to have wireless access outside in the open space, (but) we do plan to do that in the future.”
The residence halls’ Wi-Fi system, ResNet, has been using Aruba for years, but the largest freshman class in school history necessitated a campus-wide upgrade, which administrators didn’t expect.
ResNet is not without problems of its own, Scranton said. The Wi-Fi in his residence hall only reaches devices on the first floor, he said, prompting some freshmen to set up their own routers.
While Apple’s iOS 7 update prevented students at other universities from accessing campus Wi-Fi on their iPhones and iPads, Jurasin said the new software had little connection to Cal Poly’s Internet problems.
Though many students downloaded the update at the same time, Secure Mustang Wireless’ high bandwidth allowed devices to run smoothly.
ITS sent out a campus-wide email on Friday saying iPhone and iPad users must install the new mobile configuration profiles on Cal Poly’s website.
Mac OS X and iOS users should click “OK” if prompted with the informational certificate “clearcampuspass.” Windows and Android users should see no programming interruptions.