Mobile devices on ASU campus reaches record high

PHOENIX — On an average day at Arizona State University, more than 38,000 mobile devices are connected to the university’s Wi-Fi network. On busy days, that number spikes to 44,000.

“We’re seeing more and more students with of course smartphones and laptops and tablets and then wearable devices as well, we’re seeing a lot more of that whether it’s Fitbit or whatever the case may be,” Jay steed, assistant vice president for University Technology Office Operations and Customer Support, said.

According to Steed, the average ASU student currently brings 3-5 mobile devices to campus every day, all of which have the ability to connect to the university’s Wi-Fi.

“Even if the device isn’t in use, it’s actually actively pinging against an access point to either do updates or downloads or check email automatically and things like that,” he said.

So even though thousands of mobile devices on campus are not actively being used, they are still consuming bandwidth across the university’s network.

Steed said in order to maintain or increase the school’s Wi-Fi speeds as more devices are brought to campus, the University Technology Office has created a plan to strengthen the campus Wi-Fi.

“We do have some additional plans to add another 2000 wireless access points in 529 classroom over the next three years to improve the services there for the teaching and learning environment” he said.

In the meantime, Steed said he is confident the current network will manage.

“We feel comfortable that right now we can manage the amount of devices now and for at least the next three years,” he said. “We don’t see the number of devices increasing significantly but we see the demand of how those devices and what they are doing whether they are streaming videos or uploading data. So, it’s more of a capacity issue than a coverage issue at this point.”