mobile devices on wireless

[browolf]

The Head wants all the students to be able to connect to the guest wireless(internet only) on their phones/devices. 1600 students! Although whether they would for filtered internet, we don't know.

 

Still We're a little concerned whether the wireless would handle it. It runs 175 teacher laptops and a some sixth form laptops on the guest sid. We have 3com wireless with managed switches.

 

any other schools allowing that kind of thing?

[SYNACK]

Get a quote for the install and procurement of 1 AP per room and a bunch for common areas that will have more than 30 laptops + 30 phones on at the same time and see how enthusiastic he still is.

[m25man]

I would be looking closely at your underlying infrastructure first.

 

Is your guest VLAN capable of handing out 1600 IP addresses by DHCP?

Is the resulting authentication and association traffic enough to destroy your wireless LAN on its own?

Does your system support client isolation (thus stopping inter client traffic such as viruses from spreading)

Unfiltered access is not an option, you have a duty of care and if a kid uses your wifi to surf porn sites your going to be in trouble as you would be with P2P and other copyright issues.

As @SYNACK says if the hardware cost doesnt put them off the other issues might cause a serious rethink of the whole thing.

[CyberNerd]

We allow student/staff mobile devices to connect to wireless, don't have anything like 100% takeup, more like 10% (170 ish units)

 

we've still not setup transparent proxying though, I am still thinking about it -android devices can be an issue for proxy support but still connect to VLE fine.

 

I would echo this comment:

I would be looking closely at your underlying infrastructure first.