Purdue University gives itself a Wi-Fi glow-up

You didn’t need testing equipment to measure the state of Purdue University’s Wi-Fi network. You just needed to look on Reddit, where complaints were flying. That was the situation Ian Hyatt walked in to when he took a job as CIO of Purdue University three years ago. Service for the Wi-Fi network, known as PAL—short for Purdue AirLink—was so hated that students put up a protest banner. Bad Wi-FI is a problem anywhere it happens, but it’s particularly bad for a college campus. Although Purdue’s Cisco networking equipment was out-of-date, Purdue was happy with the vendor and began work with them on a top-of-the-line upgrade. The upgrade increased network throughput fourfold and availability increased more than 20 percentage points, to over 99%. Purdue upgraded to Wi-Fi 6 and, using Cisco Meraki, students can build their own networks with custom network names.