High density, capacity, BYOD, channel planning, etc. All terms you hear when lecture hall or auditorium style seating comes to mind in a campus environment. We are joined by Robert Boardman as our guest to discuss the challenges and solutions around lecture hall Wi-Fi.

Lecture Hall Wi-Fi

Robert Boardman is our guest to discuss how we take on lecture hall Wi-Fi. I decided to use the term lecture hall but this could be a large classroom or auditorium style seating. In summary, you have a large number of students condensed into an area which creates high density and the need for capacity.

We know it’s high density because of the number of seats in a room. But how do we design for these challenging environments? Robert and I talk about designing these rooms using Ekahau Site Survey.

While designing for high density is one thing to consider. We cannot leave out capacity. Students are doing much more on wireless during a lecture. Some are checking email, watching YouTube videos, and some are actually taking notes. Yeah, shocker.

Professors are now engaging the students in something called interactive teaching. During a lecture, a professor will tell students to perform an action on their computers or mobile devices. This is where capacity plays a major factor. What types of applications are being used in the lecture hall over Wi-Fi and will our infrastructure hold up.

In this episode, we talk about channel planning and utilization. It plays an important role for creating efficient airtime for each device.

Other topics we delve into are:

* RRM

* Data rates

* Aesthetics

* Validation surveys

* AP and antenna selection

What is your experience with campus Wi-Fi in lecture halls? Let us know in the comments below!