> I think you're sensationalizing this a bit.  You're not trying to give
> everyone a pristine 10Mb/sec network connection, but something more reliable
> than WiFi.  With 120 users the total bandwidth requirements are going to
> exceed anything you can supply for a reasonable price.  And of course you
> don't do this in a single 120:1 step.  8:1 or 16:1 switches are cheap,
> available, and don't require much power.  Two tiers of switches should do
> this fine.

What I'm envisioning would be one or two gigabit lines into the room,
with one or two switches of 16-32 ports each, and one line from each
of those switches to a single 8 port switch handling the traffic from
each row of seats.

Of course, one problem with this idea (which I can't overcome) is
the University telecom policy disallowing passing network cables
from one room into another.  Last time I heard, they considered
cables passed down through one hole in the floor and then back
up, with both ends in the same room, to be an "illegal" setup.
They'll charge us per jack, in that case.

> I would look into throttling the bandwidth of each individual connection
> coming out of the second tier switches.

A good idea, and maybe we could do that with the WAPs.  IF we had
control over their settings.

> If each student in the class had 1Mb/sec available, that would still allow
> most people to get the full bandwidth most of the time.  It's a lot better
> than most DSL connections, and should be more than sufficient for anything
> you should be legitimately doing in a class.

If it was constant, sure.  My cable internet connection is rated at ~1.5
megabits, best case, and it's usually more than fast enough for anything
I'd want to do.  The problem is not just resource limitation, but also user
education.  ANYTHING which depends purely on user education is
(IMHO) doomed to failure.  No matter what we say to the instructors,
sooner or later, one of them will build full motion video into their syllabus,
and won't come to us with the problem until class.  No matter what we
say to the students, when their slideshow doesn't open instantly, they'll
double click it again, and again, until something happens.

Mike H.

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