1 to 1 and Wireless density

[Peter Christ]

Our district is investigating the possibilities of starting a 1 to 1 initiative and are looking at our infrastructure in the process. For those of you who have a 1 to 1 in place, how many access point (on average, I realize building construction dictates) are spread throughout the building? Is it one per classroom? Is it more dense? or less? Are you having the a device that manages the access points? Is there a particular vendor that is well represented in schools that have a high concentration of laptops? I realize that much of this information depends on your site, number of laptops, etc. But before a vendor TELLS me what I need, I was looking for the voice of experience from those that are in the throws of a 1 to 1.

Thanks

[Mike Dronen]

Peter - you are correct - lots of variable in designing and properly implementing the kind of wireless network that will serve your needs. We run almost 1 AP per classroom in our program (1,000 students) and find that adequate - even running on older AP's. We currently do not use any centralized management tools for batch software updates and monitoring. A newer set of AP's might not require this number of AP's, but I suspect it would be close. The building itself is of a somewhat traditional brick and block construction

[George Hobson]

The type of AP and the system you have is more important than the number of APs.
Have put some information here which might help.

[Erich Tusch]

Hello Peter,

We are a 1:1 in northern New Jersey. Congratulations on making this step! When we built our wireless infrastructure 76 years ago, we designed an 802.1a network and placed one access point in classroom. This protocol also provided enough wireless channels to reduce/prevent channel overlaps. We went with a Symbol Technologies solution, (now Motorola), which is centrally managed at the switch level. You don't want to be responsible for doing firmware updates to individual APs!

I would recommend that you work with an network integrator who knows wireless technologies, and give them specs such as "must allow for 35 simultaneous logins", etc.

Good luck,

Erich Tusch
District Supervisor of Technology
Pascack Valley Regional High School District

[Charles Thacker]

We implemented a Meru wireless network (802.11 a/b/g/n) in the fall of 2008 at our 4 middle schools to support a 1:1 of 2,100+ laptops (500-700 per school). There is no single correct answer to this question, as others have mentioned, but with the latest technology in wireless you can do more with less. We have an AP spaced about every 2-4 classrooms and we have had great success. The building materials and other environmental factors will impact your wireless greatly so a pre-build design process should include a full test for wireless penetration in your building. Most vendors will help with this to be on the bid list. The central management available in systems like Meru (and several others) is a definite plus and reduces our workload quite a bit compared to individually managed APs. We are now deploying another 65+ APs across two high school campuses to prepare for their 9th grade 1:1 deployment in the fall of 2009.