Hood College’s faculty has requested funding for an upgrade to the campus’s Wi-Fi services.
This upgrade would update the several Wi-Fi connections offered on campus from 802.11n to 802.11ac. In addition to being compatible with more hardware, the update would offer a significant boost to connection speeds.
Compared to the 30 megabytes-per-second speed of 802.11n, 802.11ac typically has a speed of 90 megabytes-per-second. This means that loading webpages, downloads, and streaming videos would hypothetically be far more efficient than before.
Mike Pasquerette, Hood’s network engineer, said that the upgrade was a possibility, not a certainty. If the necessary funding for the upgrade is acquired, the changes would take effect during the summer break of 2016.
Smartphones may benefit the most from the change. Wi-Fi services that have 802.11ac connections allow for “beamforming,” which allows for mobile devices to receive the best possible connection by preventing multiple signals from interfering with each other and canceling each other out.
The upgrade would be one of several changes to Hood’s campus for the academic year of 2016-2017, along with Shriner Hall becoming co-ed and Memorial and Smith Halls being limited to freshmen only.
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