Thank goodness this semester is almost over!  I mean, it’s gone really well and everything, but it’s about time Christmas got here.  I’ve been busy with finals and end of semester projects lately, and one of those projects was actually pretty fun and interesting.

I’m an electrical engineering student, so for my first semester as a full-time freshman, I had to take Intro to EE.  Our final assignment was to write a research paper in IEEE format.  The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is the professional institution for EE, so the point of this assignment wasn’t really to write a paper, it was to learn how to use this format, since every paper I’ll ever write as an electrical engineer is going to have to be in this format.

Even though the real point of the assignment was the format, we had to pick a topic that answered a non-trivial question about electrical engineering.  As the professor was talking about the differenet types of research papers, I was thinking I’d take the easy way out and just do an “archival” research paper, meaning I just find other sources and put stuff together.  But then I got an idea.  What if I tested the WiFi on each campus of KSU?  This would not only be really interesting for me, but it would also put me into the “experimental” research category, which would get me some extra brownie points on the assignment.

So I started testing.  I used the SpeedTest.net app, testing three spots in five different buildings on each campus.  For those of you who don’t know, Kennesaw State University recently merged with Southern Polytechnic State University (the engineering school where I go).  The two universities are now both technically just KSU, but they’ve been dubbed the Kennesaw Campus and the Marietta Campus, respectively.  I tested each campus’ student center, dining hall, library, and the two buildings with the most classes.  I then averaged all the data and… the Marietta Campus has better WiFi!

But even though Marietta’s average was better, speeds varied wildly across the board.  I guess that’s just what happens when you have a network covering that large of an area with that many people connected to it.  The entire paper (which I did in a group with three other people) goes into more details about how the testing was conducted as well as the logistics of large-scale networks like that.  I’ve uploaded the paper here in case any of you are interested in reading it.  If you really couldn’t care less about the more boring part, you can just scroll down to the charts and see all the data as to how each campus stacks up.  Enjoy!  ••