An Introduction
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DragonDrop is a home-grown, internally
developed Drexel software project.

Faculty and staff first began using an early
version of the system in 2004.

First web-based version became available in
2006.

2007 Campus Technology “Innovators”
award

This project was developed as a response to the
need to minimize the staff handling time
necessary to encode and publish rich media
destined for web delivery, and to make access to
Drexel’s current archive of web-based ondemand rich media as simple as possible

It was determined that the first issue could be
addressed by automating the encoding and
publishing process. The second would be
addressed by using modern content syndication
techniques.

The brainchild of John Morris, the director of
Academic Technology Innovation at IRT

Aka Rich Media Conversion Project (RMCP)
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Available on-demand only to faculty and staff

Offered to partner schools.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is XML data, or
metadata, which describes or contains content

Podcasting describe a new web broadcasting
paradigm that combines RSS with web-friendly
audio (MP3) and video (MP4) files

DragonDrop makes syndication and podcasting
easy by publishing media and metadata to the
web, but that’s not all…

Capture : Author rich media content

Drop : Upload from the Web application

Encode : Convert to and from a variety of web
ready formats

Publish : Push to the web as HTML and RSS

Play : Access your published content from
anywhere on the web
&
TechSmith Relay
drop
capture
encode
publish
play
Users can select rich media
or text files from their hard
drives to upload or drop into
the system. In this interface
users will assign metadata
to their upload, as well as
select which output formats
they’d like to have created
from the input source.
The output types provided
are optimized formats for
web delivery.
DragonDrop offers many
encoding possibilities to users.
The following charts
summarizes available output
encoding formats, at different
quality settings.
Users can author content
directly in the DragonDrop
web application. This is done
using the Capture interface.
By hooking into the video and
audio from your computer,
provided it has a camera and
microphone.
Videos can be easily record,
and then automatically
published to a playlist.
Playlists are lists of links (or
URLs) that can point to
anything that is addressable
on the web, which could
include media files, websites,
images or even other
Playlists.
Through the Playlist interface
users can create and manage
their Playlists, add, edit,
delete items, re-order items,
and edit metadata. Playlists
are automatically available to
users as HTML and RSS.
Playlists can be password
protected by their creators.
Rich media content can be
managed through the Media
interface once it's been
ingested.
Users can edit media object
metadata, preview their files
and delete them, as well as
spot adding files to existing
playlists.
We now allow users to track
the progress of the media
they’ve dropped into the
system as it processes.
Once job is complete users
will receive an email
notification with links to the
item and the playlist.
In the Options interface users
can manage personal
preferences, including:
• Output templates, which
bundle together multiple file
encoding outputs for reuse.
• Surrogate Users, who can
be designated to act on a
user’s behalf in DragonDrop.
Additionally users can
manage:
• Notification Email(s)
• Personal Profile
• Registered Phones
Playlist and Media interfaces
allow users to search across
media and playlist content for
their own and content
designated as shared by other
authors.
Users can easily view and add
search result items to their
playlists.

DragonDrop was developed as a composite
of various closed and open source
applications and technologies including:
▪ ASP.NET 3. 5 (C#), Perl, Flash, XML, JavaScript (AJAX)
▪ IIS 7, SQL Server 2005, Real Helix Server
Flash Media Sever
▪ Lucene (search engine)
▪ Sorenson Squeeze, TechSmith Relay, TextAloud,
PDFCamp, Flash Syndrome
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7,631 items “Dropped” in 2006
3,585 items “Dropped” in 2007 (200 users)
By Fall 2008 – 17,000 files : >15,000 hrs of
audio and video accumulated over the prior 5
years.
Winter 2012 – 57,000 files : 1,400 registered
users, 400 active users

Content Creation
 Capture with Techsmith’s Fuse (Video & Audio) or
Techsmith’s Screen Chomp (Whiteboard & Audio).
 Capture with any other “capture” program (e.g.
audio, video (Qik), pictures, office docs, …
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Content Playback
 Playback via Playlist – everything except FLV &
SWF.

Manage most operations
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Home Page
http://www.drexel.edu/irt/rmcweb

TechSmith Relay
http://relay.irt.drexel.edu

Contact me
morrisimedia@yahoo.com
The challenges, Designing for Density, and Exposing the Myths
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Tablets Sold Annually, 2010 - 2020 (est) (in Millions)
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Source: Jefferies & Co. estimates
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“Without Proper Planning, Enterprises Deploying
iPads will need 300% more WiFi”
Tim Zimmerman, October 2011
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“By 2015, 80% of newly installed wireless networks
will be obsolete because of a lack of proper
planning”
Top Wireless Issues That May Derail Your Mobile Strategy
Paul DeBeasi, October 2011
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Christmas 2011 Day Activations
 ~ 7 Million
Daily Activations
 IOS – 450,000 (est.)
 Android – 700,000 (est.)
Campus Device Increase (Q4 – Q1)
 Higher Ed – 30 – 40% growth
 K-12 – Up to 80%
What’s Coming?
 By 2015 over 7.1 billion mobile devices in service
 Tables are even becoming replacements for printing costs,
POS devices, … (e.g. Kindle Fire @ $199)
 Over 1 Million “New” iPads presold as of March 16th, 2012
 We are at the “Tipping Point”
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
Recognizing the Truths
 BYOD changes everything
 Can’t just “throw APs” at the problem
 It will get worse
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Manage the Clients
 Bands and Channels
 Performance Capabilities
 Appreciate Radio/Client Densities
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Manage the Users
 Classification
 Separation / Optimization
 Monitoring
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Thank You!
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Design Wi-Fi network for iPads the same as for laptops
 Laptop capabilities are significantly superior to handheld devices
▪ Laptops have more powerful batteries = higher transmit power
▪ Laptop antennas provide superior gain = greater range and higher signal strength
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Add more APs (radios) to address increasing densities
 Adding radios is a key point, not just APs
▪ Requires multi-state radios no the fixed design of most APs (3 vs. 24 channels)
▪ Addressing density is about controlling the number of devices sharing a radio
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Existing network works fine, should for iPads too
 Wrong, you need to consider traditional use cases
▪ Laptops used for a variety of use cases and have far superior wireless capabilities
▪ Phones are primary voice devices with limited internet use
 iPads are extensive users of streaming video
▪ In most studies, video use is 5x that of a phone, requires additional bandwidth
▪ Expecting same QoS capabilities from a handheld device vs. a laptop is a mistake
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Two frequency bands used in Wi-Fi (27 channels)
 2.4 GHz – used by 802.11 b/g/n clients
 3 non-overlapping channels
 Limited bandwidth, prone to interference
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5 GHz – used by 802.11 a/n clients
 24 non-overlapping channels (differs by geo region)
 8x the bandwidth, less potential for interference
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What happens if you do nothing?
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As device density and traffic goes up, so will complaints.
Students complaining from areas you never had problems
before.
Wireless networks that ran fine all of a sudden do not work.
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More Radios*
 Multi-State radios 2.4GHz / 5GHz
 Limit iPads per radio
▪ ~15 iPads per 5G radio
▪ ~10 iPads per 2.4G radio
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Leverage Client “Steering” Services
 Steer clients toward 5G
 Steer clients towards higher performance radios
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Full Coverage for both Wi-Fi bands
 2.4GHz as LCD
 5GHz for most tables & BEST performance
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Stronger Signal Strength
 Laptops required -72dBm (RSSI)
 Tables / Smartphones require -65dBm minimum
* Gartner Group has stated that enterprises will need to deploy 300% more
APs for iPads to achieve the same wireless performance as typical laptops.
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Clients – The Weakest Link
 Client types bring even best networks to its knees
▪ 11n alone does not = performance
▪ 5GHz bands more important than 11n speeds
▪ Clients will connect at different speeds

Product Capabilities are the key
 Understand 2.4GHz vs. 5GHz
 Always a mix of clients, separate high and low speed
clients
 Move all dual band clients to 5GHz
▪ Higher performance for 5Ghz clients
▪ Higher performance for 2.4GHz clients
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Fixed Radios – clients restricted by radio type
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Multi-State Radios – optimize Wi-Fi services to Clients
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iPads have unique wireless characteristics that
must be considered in the network design.
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Identify Student & Device Class
 Notebook, Phone, Tablet, Game, Media Player, …
 Set Policies
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Identify Student & Device Type
 iPad, iPod, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Win
Mobile, Linux, …
 Set Policies
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Classroom Device Management Tools
 Posture Control
 Client Monitoring
 Desktop Sharing / iPad Mirroring
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Identify station type and class, e.g. tablet, phone,
Blackberry, iPad, etc.
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2011 was first year of BYOD/T
10k devices on network Oct’11
18k devices on network Jan’12
Devices
 School provides Gemtek devices
 Some iPads
 Mostly Apple BYOD devices
▪ iPhones, iPods
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45,000 attendees across 2
million sqft
18,000 unique Wi-Fi users
7,700 unique users in one room
(keynote)
4,200 users at once in on 20
multi-state, multi-AP arrays
643 users on 1 array
58 total arrays with 660 radios
deployed
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Wireless Tipping Point on Campus
Exposing Wireless Myths
Designing for Tablets
Mobile Device Management
Case Studies
Q&A
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