Mudd's wireless connection

Colleges & Universities Harvey Mudd College
1

<p>I’m buying a new laptop and want to know whether to get an N wireless card…
Does Mudd have N routers or just G routers?</p>

2

<p>This FAQ may be outdated (rev date in 2005), but at least has contact info. I’m pretty sure it’s the one they referred us to last year. It indicates 802.11b support, but says nothing about 802.11n/g.
<a href=“http://www.hmc.edu/cis/resources/students/incoming/FroshFAQ.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hmc.edu/cis/resources/students/incoming/FroshFAQ.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>There are N access points throughout the Claremont campus. (I observed this on my phone while walking from Pomona to Mudd.)</p>

4

<p>Windows stated my Wifi connection speed as 72 Mb/s, so we have some flavor of wireless-n in the dorms. There’s definitely wireless g.</p>

<p>It’s probably more cost-effective to get a standard wireless g card then use the savings to buy an ethernet cable at the bookstore. You’ll need it to access Mudd’s “network”, the incredible series of student-managed servers filled with movies, games, TV shows, music, etc. There’s maybe around 10 TB of content. Probably worth buying a cheap 1 TB external to store everything on. Also, the wired connections sometimes gave me internet downloads that maxed out my hard drive’s write speed of 70-some MB/s.</p>

5

<p>You don’t need to save to get an ethernet cable. Just don’t buy from the bookstore.
[Cat</a> 6 Network Cables](<a href=“http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10232]Cat”>http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10232)</p>

<p>Mine cost me less than $2. Got the 6’. Those are cat 6 too, so up to 10 gigabit, much more than enough for max speeds on the network. Depending on your hard drive speed, you might be fine with cat 5e cable, which will cost you less than a dollar.</p>

6

<p>You can also access the network via wireless if either one of two things is true:</p>

<h1>1) You know the actual IP of servers (as opposed to just the server name); this can be found by pinging (or asking someone to ping the server)</h1>

<h1>2) The server you’re working with has registered its DNS so you can access it at SERVER_NAME.st.hmc.edu</h1>

<p>That being said, wireless is inherently a bit unstable (even though Mudd’s is really good); it’s nice to have the ethernet connection.</p>