Over the past few months IDSG has invested significant amounts of time reviewing and analyzing the feedback provided to us, via multiple channels, by the EECS community. Among these channels were the IRIS survey, network trouble tickets and help desk reports. The most commonly received piece of feedback regarded the general lack of reliability and performance in the wireless services currently offered by the college.
After carefully inspecting the situation and attempting to determine the root cause of this issue it has been found that the single most significant contributor to this problem is the proliferation of rogue wireless devices. These devices not only decrease the reliability of the EECS network as a whole, but also exacerbate a number of smaller issues inherent to the very nature of wireless communications.
In order to adequately confront this threat and provide our community with the expected level of wireless service, we will begin active mitigation of unapproved wireless devices found to be broadcasting in [IRIS airspace](https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/15-faq/21-network/20-wireless.html#coverage) beginning on Thursday, June 27th. These actions will only apply to devices that provide wireless service such as access points and wireless routers. All other devices (including phones, tablets, and PDAs) will be entirely unaffected by this change. This action will be performed automatically and without prejudice as per our wireless vendor’s best practices.
As always we are open to feedback from the community and welcome the reporting of any and all issues at help@eecs.berkeley.edu.
Thank you, IDSG Networking Team
UPDATE
[2013-06-24 18:45:19 | Timothy Scoppetta]
In order to adequately prepare for the upcoming wifi modifications, user facing changes have been delayed until 9:00 AM Thursday, June 27th. A number of underlying changes will be made beginning Tuesday, June 25th; However, these changes are not expected to have any noticeable impact on wired or wireless services.
UPDATE
[2013-07-30 10:26:48 | Derek Calderon]
The specified wireless network improvements have been completed and there should be no further user-facing changes. We are now actively containing rogue and ad-hoc networks which have been found to be in violation of our monitoring thresholds, which has increased the amount of wireless spectrum available for general use.
We will continue to monitor performance and usage of the wireless network and will be planning future modifications and improvements, which will be announced as they come. We welcome any questions or feedback and request that all communications be directed at help@eecs.berkeley.edu.
Thank you,
IDSG Network Group
Resolved as of 2013-07-30 10:16:00