After many months of work done by the Network Engineering team, we feel fairly confident the issues surrounding the wireless network that have plagued Miami since the start of this school year are behind us.
While we still do not have a smoking gun, we have attributed the issues to many factors, including a handful of software bugs and unintended impacts on the wireless controllers of our highly pervasive wireless roaming strategy (MU-WIRELESS.) Our final resolution to the issue at hand was some newly donated hardware from our vendor to replace our current generation controller architecture with the latest and greatest. While we still have concerns that one day these issues could return, the new hardware is adequately powered to allow us to take a methodical approach to our next steps.
Now that we feel we have a stable infrastructure, we are turning our attention to the numerous rogue access points in the Residence Halls. A rogue AP (access point) is any device that is broadcasting a wireless signal in our space and could be something as innocuous as a new printer that has a wireless printing feature to a personal AP attached to the Miami network. These rogue AP’s can cause significant issues for other students, and a single rogue could cause issues for over 20 students.
We are asking students who see rogue access points in other rooms to ask the owner to kindly turn them off, or report them to their Resident Advisor.