By SHANNON O. WELLS

The approach Pitt Digital takes in determining the strength of a wireless internet signal in a building or particular area of campus combines high-tech data-gathering equipment and good, old-fashioned shoe leather.

“It starts with what’s called a ‘wireless signal survey,’” explained Chad Burton, executive director of Pitt Digital Transformation and Analytics. “That means a person is walking every floor in every building on the Oakland campus with a specialized device that gathers data on the signal strength and signal quality.”

That data gets fed into a simulation tool, to which Burton’s team has uploaded floor plans for all campus buildings.

“That tool then generates what the optimal design should be: ‘You want to move this one from here to here, you want to add two more on that side,’ things like that,” he said. “It creates that design. Then we have Pitt’s network architect Eric Allen, and our service delivery team, … who review these designs and adjust as needed based on what they know about the buildings.”

Despite the advanced nature of the digital technology, institutional knowledge still goes a long way. “Because they’ve been in these buildings, they know more than any simulation tool ever could,” Burton noted.

This process, carried out in every non-residence University building around Oakland, lays the groundwork for the Network Modernization Initiative, a major upgrade to the PittNet Wi-Fi and Wired Digital Network taking place this spring and summer.

With help from outside technicians, the Pitt Digital team started work just after spring commencement to install nearly 4,000 new Wi-Fi access points to eliminate coverage gaps. Other aspects of the initiative include upgrading the behind-the-scenes equipment and infrastructure connecting everything and fine-tuning coverage based on real-world testing. All campus buildings except previously upgraded residential halls will be affected.

“Modernizing a network across dozens of buildings — many constructed as far back as the 1920s, with thick concrete walls that Wi-Fi signals struggle to penetrate — requires careful planning, specialized expertise, and ongoing adjustment once spaces are in active use,” says a statement on Pitt Digital’s page on the Network Modernization Initiative.

More than just replacing old equipment with new equipment, the project will add Wi-Fi and internet access points and move some equipment bases to other locations. As Burton explained, the way a Wi-Fi signal is shared has literally changed shape through the years.

Pitt’s original wireless network used a technology where the transmitting wireless signal spread “very far, very wide, so a few (routers) could cover a wide area, maybe a whole floor,” he said. “As the technology has progressed, as our Wi-Fi has gotten faster, the signal is more of a cone (shape), so it doesn’t spread as wide.

“If you don’t make changes to the placement of this equipment or the quantity of this equipment,” he added, “you end up with dead zones, and that’s where we have ended up.”

Along with eliminating dead zones around campus, the project also addresses what Burton calls the No. 1 issue that gets reported, which is “a dropped connection as somebody is walking around a building. That shouldn’t happen, but it does happen, because in our current state we have old technology and new technology,” he noted. “And those two technologies cannot talk to each other.

“If you’re in a part of the floor with the old technology and then you walk to a part with the new, you’re going to lose your connection. It’s going to have to reconnect, so that’s obviously not a good experience. We want to eliminate that.”

That means ensuring all components of cross-campus wireless equipment are compatible with each other, to accommodate what Burton calls “really smooth handoffs.”

“Hopefully, the individual doesn’t even notice when that’s happening,” he said.

Calling the project the largest single deployment of wireless equipment since Pitt’s wireless network was created, Burton noted that Pitt Digital works closely with Facilities Management any time a building is renovated.

“If it’s scheduled for renovation, we go in and upgrade it to the newer architecture and layout and everything, so it’s not that no part of the campus has been touched in 15 years,” he clarified. “It’s just that we have not taken a holistic look at 100% of the Oakland campus to identify the areas, so you’ve got some places that really haven’t been touched in a long time.”

Among those is Allen Hall, which was among the first buildings tackled for the upgrade. “The data that we gathered confirmed what we had been hearing from faculty there, which is ‘My Wi-Fi is not very good.’ It was, again, that issue with the signal: When it was designed, the equipment spread the signal far and wide, and the new equipment keeps it more narrow. And we’re able to identify this.”

Fair warning

To minimize disruptions, Pitt Digital is communicating all planned service interruptions in advance. Implementation will require localized planned service disruptions when a “cut over” from the old to the new system takes place. “There’s going to be a period of time where there’s no internet in that building,” Burton explained. “To address that, we are working with managers for each building.”

The Pitt Digital Customer Success Team also is communicating with all customers to understand variables including what events and experiments are going on this summer that “absolutely cannot be disrupted,” where are classes for the summer term taking place, and asking if “we get to those before, after or in between?” Burton said. “And because we have flexibility with when we do the cut over for each building, we work with the occupants of that building to identify the least disruptive time to make that change.”

In addition to planning the conversion project for the summer months to minimize disruptions, Burton said savvy strategizing by the team led to notable cost savings in the wake of a global microchip shortage.

“As we started buying the equipment that we needed, we learned that there’s a global microchip shortage that’s been caused by the AI boom, so there’s supply-demand economics that are causing the prices of all the equipment we need to go up significantly,” Burton said. “What we were seeing was every month the cost would go up by 12% and was expected to be at least 40% more by the end of this year.”

A team including Pitt Digital, the office of the chief financial officer and the Purchasing Department was formed to identify all equipment needed for the next 12 to 24 months and purchase it this spring “to lock in today’s prices.”

“That was not an easy task,” he noted. “So, yeah, I’m grateful that we had a team. It was definitely a lot of work, but we ultimately saved a lot of money by mobilizing as quickly as we did.”

A 10-year veteran of Pitt’s digital technology realm in “various incarnations,” Burton has led information technology operations for the past six months. In this role, he’s made a point of considering what his department could do to “have the greatest impact” while respecting the University’s “finite resources.”

“The network, everybody uses it: all of our students, all of our faculty, all of our staff,” he noted. “We know it needs improvements, so it felt like the right time to just direct all of our energy over the summer to just really focus and have this big impact that will improve it for the whole campus community.”

Shannon Wells is a University Times reporter. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.

Have a story idea or news to share? Share it with the University Times.

Follow the University Times on Facebook.