One of the problems that may be hindering the progress of outdoor WiFi updates is cost. The special access points that are required for outdoor use are very expensive and require special infrastructure upgrades. With the high cost in mind it’s obvious why outdoor WiFi hasn’t just popped up all at once. So naturally there must be a plan for for upgrades to happen over time. When considering which areas to upgrade first it seems to make sense that the highest traffic areas receive the priority.

By observation it becomes pretty obvious that there are a few major paths that students tend to take every day. Of course there are many other paths that students may take but the two major paths should take priority. The map below shows some of the proposed high traffic areas. The green areas already have outdoor wireless capabilities, the yellow areas are lower priority and the red areas are the high traffic areas.

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It may come as a shock to some people that wireless internet is not actually wireless at all! In fact for a large wireless network there may be hundreds or thousands of wires just to get the wireless data to the internet! If we considered how many wires it takes to actually stitch together the internet we probably wouldn’t be able to count them!

So then what does it actually take to make a wireless network, huh? Let’s start small and look at a typical wireless application for the home. Everyone with internet at home has WiFi these days thanks to “wireless routers.” But “wireless routers” are neither “wireless” nor are the only “routers”, so what’s going on?

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