The next 2 buildings from Phase 3 of the project, Cassie & Drummond, are ready and will be migrated over to the new WiFi on Tuesday 7th April at 6:30pm.

The remaining 6 halls will be migrated to the production controllers Tue 7th – Thu 9th during the day starting at 10am. These halls are scheduled as follows,

Castle Leazes (Tue 7th). Leazes Parade, Bowsden Court and Leazes Terrace (Wed 8th). Marris House and Richardson Road (Thu 9th).

We have also switched on 2.4GHz wireless in Cookson and Henry Wellcome buildings which are not covered by NUTH access points. We are planning to do the same in Leech where we can. We have no plans to turn on 2.4GHz in the Dental School at this time since this is not a University owned building.

The 5 buildings scheduled to be migrated to the new wireless infrastructure this week, Merz Court, Agriculture, Dental School, Kings Gate and Science Central Core building, were all successfully moved.

As a bonus we have also brought Easton Hall online today. This is the first of the Phase 3 buildings just recently added to the schedule. Other buildings will be added to the schedule in the coming weeks.

The Medical School is still scheduled to be migrated over on Monday evening.

We are planning to migrate the WiFi in the Medical School (Cookson / Leech / Henry Wellcome) on Monday 23rd March from 7pm onwards.

NOTE: In line with an agreement between the University and the NHS Trust, the new University WiFi access points within the Dental School and Medical School will be configured to support wireless services ONLY on the newer 5GHz radio band (802.11a/n). Support for the older 2.4GHz radio band (802.11b/g/n) will be DISABLED in these areas.

Modern WiFi-enabled devices typically support both radio bands/standards, and should continue to operate as normal. However users of any devices supporting only the older 2.4GHz radio band will not be able to connect in these buildings.

Users should refer to their device documentation to establish if this limitation affects their device.

The IT Service would welcome feedback (positive or negative) on the user experience following implementation of the new WiFi service in Dental and Medical Schools.

The wireless controller upgrades have been proceeding without problems, the final upgrade will be tomorrow morning, so we will continue to migrate more buildings next week.

Sunday 15th March - Merz Court
Monday 16th March - Agriculture
Tuesday 17th March - Dental School
Wednesday 18th March - Kings Gate
Thursday 19th March - Science Central

Migrations will occur during the evening from approx 6:30pm onwards. Outages will only take seconds, the time it takes to reconnect to the new access points.

Software updates to fix issues with the central controllers will be rolled out next week. Three pairs of controllers will be upgraded over three early mornings from 7am Monday – Wednesday. Building affected are as follows,

Monday 9th – Politics, Jesmond Road, Windsor Place, Kensington Terrace, Park Terrace, Robinson Library, Stephenson and Windsor Terrace Halls.

Tuesday 10th – Bedson, Grand Hotel, Herschel, Kings Road Centre and Percy.

Wednesday 11th – Ridley Building 2, St Marys and Wolfson Building.

Outages to wifi should be approximately 15-20 minutes but should be considered at risk during the entire upgrade process. Once the controllers have been upgraded migrations will resume from March 16th.