Some wireless data information from a major university campus

[Exterous]

One of universities that we work with passed along some wireless information to us as part of a project and I thought it was pretty interesting so I thought I would share. (They sent out a public email with this section of data today)

Over a 7 day period ending January 29th
Student body: 35,231
Faculty\Staff: 21,573
84,921 unique client devices
45% of devices were 5 Ghz
38% of devices tagged as 'Apple' (Majority of the rest were 'unknown')
236 TB of traffic passed

Thats a lot of devices and data for 7 days

 

[Rakehellion]

How much pr0n?

 

[Genx87]

They clearly signed up for the 35 unlimited data plan from Comcast.

On a more serious note this stuff is fascinating. I sat in on a wireless conference last Spring. The company did a rollout for the Superbowl in 2014 and 2015. They showed us the growth between just one year. I want to say in 2014 there were around 35,000 devices connected and they uploaded 1.5TB of data. In 2015 it was more like 45,000 devices and 6TB of data.

 

[IronWing]

How much pr0n?

Back in the 90s, I read a article that claimed that 70% of the transfers between Japan and the US were porn files. Seemed legit but maybe was just made up. There, now I've advanced this cancer of unverified "information" that plagues the internet.

 

[cbrunny]

Is that all wireless only? No wired at all?

Faculty/Staff probably have wired connections. More than likely, that means that each student has an average of 2+ devices.

 

[Homerboy]

Is that all wireless only? No wired at all?

Faculty/Staff probably have wired connections. More than likely, that means that each student has an average of 2+ devices.

Pretty sure faculty/staff would be using WiFi on their phones and tablets too...

 

[Exterous]

How much pr0n?

Not sure. They don't really block much but they do monitor. I know one GSI lost their position because they couldn't stop torrenting copyright material.

They clearly signed up for the 35 unlimited data plan from Comcast.

On a more serious note this stuff is fascinating. I sat in on a wireless conference last Spring. The company did a rollout for the Superbowl in 2014 and 2015. They showed us the growth between just one year. I want to say in 2014 there were around 35,000 devices connected and they uploaded 1.5TB of data. In 2015 it was more like 45,000 devices and 6TB of data.

Yeah I saw some of their wireless growth numbers somewhere and the devices pretty much doubled and data was about 3x in a year

Is that all wireless only? No wired at all?

Faculty/Staff probably have wired connections. More than likely, that means that each student has an average of 2+ devices.

Wireless only. Staff might be 50/50 but pretty much all faculty have a laptop\tablet unless they don't want one. (Labs are different and tend to be mostly\exclusively wired) They are actually removing wired connections and podium computers from some classrooms because faculty don't use them. A lot of staff have laptops as well and a (to me) shocking number of offices have all their ethernet ports disabled

When I am on campus I'll pretty much only use their wireless as the signal and speed is very robust. Large data transfers were also faster than I thought they would be although wired is still faster. They do have 10G to some of their research areas and thats just plain fun to play with

 

[cbrunny]

Ah cool. I work at a University. We are still heavily wired for faculty/staff and podiums. Very few have a need for wireless in our current arrangement.

Students are the exact opposite though.

 

[Genx87]

With Wireless AC Multi-Gbps is reality to clients. It wouldnt surprise me at all they are dropping wired ethernet to the clients. I am debating whether to do this in the future at our office. Spend the money on backend switching that can support multiple multi-Gbps access points instead of running wire.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

How much pr0n?

90% porn
9.9% music and games
0.1% everything else

 

[PokerGuy]

90% porn
9.9% music and games
0.1% everything else

I think you're forgetting about netflix and youtube, I'm guessing they account for a sizable portion of traffic. Other worthless crap like facebook probably accounts for some of that traffic as well because it's so pervasive.

 

[Anubis]

With Wireless AC Multi-Gbps is reality to clients. It wouldnt surprise me at all they are dropping wired ethernet to the clients. I am debating whether to do this in the future at our office. Spend the money on backend switching that can support multiple multi-Gbps access points instead of running wire.

makes sense for new construction but for existing buildings might as well just leave the wires there, all that's needed is a switch upgrade to GB if needed

 

[Sonikku]

38% was Apple devices? Hell when I was in College I was poor as shit. I don't know how kids today afford that crap priced as it is.

 

[Exterous]

38% was Apple devices? Hell when I was in College I was poor as shit. I don't know how kids today afford that crap priced as it is.

If you don't have an iPhone, Mac laptop and Beats headphones these days you are doing college wrong.

 

[Anubis]

If you don't have an iPhone, Mac laptop and Beats headphones these days you are doing college wrong.

chuckle

when I was in college every college comp was PC based (mostly Win but the Comp Sci ones ran some version of Linux) , the few random people who came to school with Macs had serious issues getting things to and from comps because they were morons

 

[core2slow]

(Majority of the rest were 'unknown')

ahhh...the good ol' days of torrenting through a proxy.

 

[Homerboy]

90% porn
9.9% music and games
0.1% everything else

Honestly, I probably used... er... watched less porn in those days. I could get the real deal whenever the urge arose (pun intended)

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Honestly, I probably used... er... watched less porn in those days. I could get the real deal whenever the urge arose (pun intended)

Would this acquisition of 'the real deal' be legal? Just asking given the state you reside in.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow that's a lot of data transfer for wifi! Actually... that's a crazy amount of people, how big is this place?

 

[Darwin333]

Would this acquisition of 'the real deal' be legal? Just asking given the state you reside in.

Well they breathed in the chloroform so that has to imply consent, right?

 

[jpiniero]

Wow that's a lot of data transfer for wifi! Actually... that's a crazy amount of people, how big is this place?

Considering he has Michigan for his location, I'm guessing he is talking about University of Michigan. Wikipedia says it has 43k students.

 

[manly]

38% was Apple devices? Hell when I was in College I was poor as shit. I don't know how kids today afford that crap priced as it is.

parents and loans.

Based on the photos of some lecture halls, the percentage is easily closer to 50% Apple devices on many U.S. campuses.

 

[Exterous]

Considering he has Michigan for his location, I'm guessing he is talking about University of Michigan. Wikipedia says it has 43k students.

We do work for a lot of universities around the country but it is a Big Ten school

 

[Greenman]

Student body: 35,231
Faculty\Staff: 21,573

That can't be right. No institution can be that top heavy.

 

[JEDIYoda]

^yawn^