How Much Connectivity Do Students Need?

A post on ZDNet, by Zack Whittaker, caught my eye today. He speaks of how Northern Michigan University will be rolling out a WiMAX setup for its campus, and the surrounding areas. This is to take the place of a standard, around the campus, wi-fi setup, which would be less widespread, but is probably already in place.

What immediately made me notice this, is that I know how difficult it is to keep a wireless network secure, to those who truly use a little Yankee ingenuity, and are so motivated. Policing a campus for illegal downloads, problems with mass downloaders, and various and sundry other problems is already a full time job. Is adding to the speed, and area of coverage, really a good idea?

Northern Michigan University (NMU) has taken a bold step in converting their standard wireless infrastructure to WiMAX, a wireless Internet technology which makes ordinary Wi-Fi look like chalk on slate in comparison.

WiMax in a nutshell uses airwave bandwidth beyond that of ordinary wireless networks and covers vast areas. The closest thing I have seen in comparison comes from The Cloud, a London based company, which uses public Wi-Fi networks to make an ad-hoc and “patchy” cloudspread across a city. WiMax on the other hand entirely blankets a city with wireless coverage.

As with all technologies, I try and balance out the equilibrium to also see the negatives as inevitably there will be at least one draw back; there always is. With WiMax, the only thing holding it back could be the price of the infrastructure setup, which in turn would trickle down to the consumer paying for it.

NMU has secured its network to run as any ordinary college or university wireless network would be - secured with their usual network login information - allowing them to be off campus and connecting in their usual fashion. With this in mind, the cost has been subsidised by including it as part of tuition fees, so there are ‘no extra costs’.

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It’s hard to comprehend a city literally blanketed with wireless signals, but a 30 mile (50 kilometre) radius would be enough to cover greater and outer London - anywhere within the M25 orbital which circles the city.

Impressive, really. Perhaps this will solve the student-come-broadband problem with universities becoming their own student dedicated Internet service providers?

Yes, it is impressive, but as noted, costly. With the cost of education going, in most places, from ‘ouch’ to ‘this is cruel and unusual’ I wonder how this is going to be justified to parents. Will they be able to opt out? I realize the need for connectivity, but sometimes the speed that the average college student feels is a necessity is a bit astounding to those of us who remember 9600 baud modems.

Also, will the bump in tuition, will it make students move to other colleges? Perhaps it will make them attend a junior college, for one or two years,  instead of the full four years at the university. Can the university stand those losses? Most schools here in California are moaning about overcrowding, all the while knowing they need the volume of students to keep things going.

As I stated above, I really do wonder about the policing of the network, and the full time job it will be to keep things running smoothly, with full legality, and while removing those nasty ‘clingers’ that always seem to come uninvited to the wireless party.

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