Wi-Fi service enhancement at CERN

Since the early 2000’s, the number of mobile devices connected to CERN’s internal network has increased from just a handful to well over 10,000. Wireless access is no longer simply “nice to have” or just for conference and meeting rooms; support for mobility is expected by most, if not all, of the CERN community. In this context, a full renewal of the CERN Wi-Fi network has been launched to deliver a state-of-the-art campus-wide Wi-Fi Infrastructure. We aim to deliver, in more than 200 office buildings with a surface area of over 400,000m2 and including many high-priority and high-occupation zones, an end-user experience comparable, for most applications, to a wired connection and with seamless mobility support. We describe here the studies and tests performed at CERN to ensure the solution we are deploying can meet these goals as well as delivering a single, simple, flexible and open management platform.