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Morrisville State College Launches Blanket 802.11n Wi-Fi Network

5:40 am on November 30, 2007 | Category: Internet, Wi-Fi, Wireless Technology

The world’s first large-scale 802.11n Wi-Fi network has been switched on at a small college in rural New York state.

The new wireless broadband network consists of 720 access points, and is based on gear provided by Meru Networks, according to IT staff at Morrisville State College.

The college has not yet conducted systematic performance and capacity testing, but students and IT staff have seen a noticeable improvement compared to the previous 802.11a/b/g infrastructure. Bandwidth-hungry applications run considerably faster, while video news feeds and online conferences are being conducted without buffering delays, according to users of the network.

“The wireless [network] that was provided before wasn’t fast enough to watch the video feeds,” said Morrisville student, Timothy Koch, a senior in the college’s Network Administration program. “The videos would still take time to buffer, and it was annoying when you’re trying to participate in class exercises and the video streams do not want to function properly.”

Morrisville currently has around 3,000 registered Wi-Fi users, and its network serves around 1,200 simultaneous wireless clients at peak periods.

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