Case Study

7SIGNAL Helps American University Increase Wi-Fi Connectivity

06/20/2022

The Problem

Founded in 1893, American University is a world-renowned student-centered research institution located in Washington, DC. The university, which is composed of eight schools and colleges, spans almost 90 acres of campus grounds in a residential setting. With close to 15,000 students and staff, the school has two neighboring campuses which include nine residential halls, a 5,000 seat arena, a law library, a public garden, and an outdoor amphitheater.

The historic American University is an intimate community nestled within an urban, culturally rich city. Students have the advantages of a traditional college setting combined with environmentally conscious grounds and state-of-the-art technology. The campus is a mixture of old and new buildings and indoor and outdoor areas, all of which provide vital Wi-Fi access for students and staff.

Recently, as part of a continual improvement process, American University transitioned to a new access point (AP) provider. The university’s Technology Operations Group beta tested the deployment in a small group of buildings. After a year with no technical complaints from students or staff, the group rolled out the new APs across campus. However, shortly thereafter, they began to receive calls about dropped connections and poor performance.

“We spent a lot of time working with our vendor and their engineers to troubleshoot the networking issues but were unable to determine the root cause,” said Bill Fleitz, Associate Director.

The Solution

It was clear that the IT group needed a surefire way to monitor, measure, and analyze the wireless environment, as well as a method of determining the best AP vendor for their network. A member within their group recommended 7SIGNAL, a corporate leader in wireless experience monitoring.

Excited about the opportunity to resolve connectivity issues and gain critical insights and control with 7SIGNAL’s products and services, the university purchased Sapphire Eye® sensors (software-enabled Wi-Fi performance hardware sensors) and Mobile Eye® agents, which are installed onto popular versions of Windows, MacOS, Linux, and/or Android devices at critical locations throughout campus.

The Results

From Reactive to Proactive—Uncovering the Cause of Wi-Fi Connectivity Issues

With almost 20,000 users connected to the wireless network each week, the day-to-day impact of intermittent wireless connectivity was significant, especially in high-profile locations.

“Before the pandemic, we received calls several times a week from students and staff complaining about dropped connections in the middle of class,” said Vick Bhatia, Senior Network Engineer. “By the time we arrived at the location and conducted tests to troubleshoot the issue, everything appeared normal. We also didn’t have time to gather important information as we had to get the class back up as quickly as possible.”

Once the Sapphire Eye sensors were installed, they were able to identify a glaring issue, which was a beacon that persistently dropped on the 5 GHz channel. “Using 7SIGNAL tools, we were able to pinpoint the issue, collect the data, and share this information with our AP vendor,” said Bhatia, who led the installation and initial setup with the 7SIGNAL team. “We also found a combination of hardware and software concerns which spanned from a bug in our vendor’s code and constant channel changes to dead hardware and load-handling strain.”

“It was the 7SIGNAL reports that made it possible to resolve the issues we were experiencing” noted Fleitz.

No matter how large your networking team is, you can’t be everywhere at once for testing and troubleshooting. “7SIGNAL is a great product that helps you become proactive instead of reactive. You can install it, gather data, understand how clients work in a particular location, have a full view of your network, and make changes as needed,” said Bhatia. “They also provide insights into issues that are brewing but haven’t risen to the surface yet.”

Bhatia, who used to spend the majority of his day troubleshooting, is now free to focus on higher leverage projects such as improving the wireless architecture as a whole and identifying important trends.

Top-Notch Training Provides Multiple Levels of Value

Bhatia and Fleitz were impressed with 7SIGNAL’s training and support even after the initial implementation. Support calls are conducted at least biweekly to review data, reports, and any concerns that may have arisen.

“There are very few companies that will stay connected with you on a regular basis, keep you up-to-date, and work closely with you to manage the networking environment,” said Fleitz. “7SIGNAL’s knowledge is impressive, their support and training are top notch, and they help translate the data to make it more useful to us.”

American University is planning on adding more Sapphire Eye sensors going forward. With remote learning and Zoom meetings, there is even more pressure to ensure the wireless environment is stable. “We plan on adding about 300 more Sapphire Eye sensors to complete the entire campus.” concluded Fleitz. “We now have peace of mind knowing that 7SIGNAL will alert us to potential issues which can be quickly resolved for students and staff.”