EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Based from the recent 5th Residential College gatherings, the residents have been in dismay because of the Wi-Fi connection in the college. The faulty Wi-Fi connection caused great stress among students as they cannot access the internet through the college Wi-Fi. Therefore in order to prevent this problem from prolonging, we have conducted a mini research to justify the problem with Wi-Fi connection among the residents (refer PROBLEM BACKGROUND pg.2) and recommend an effective alternative (refer Discussion and Solution pg.12). The recommendation would be a relevant, suitable and cost saving solution not only for the students but also for the administration.

INTRODUCTION Statement of Problem

Residents of 5th Residential College are not satisfied with the slow Wi-Fi connection in their college causing inconvenience for the students to access the Internet.

Background of the Problem

There are approximately 2000 residents staying in 5th Residential College coming from various faculties and courses doing degree, Masters and PhD. Most of them are using the college Wi-Fi to access the Internet. However, the Wi-Fi connection seemed to be very slow causing difficulties to use the Internet. Based from the feedbacks received from the respondents, approximately 99% of respondents of this college agree that they face problem when using the college Wi-Fi connection. Therefore, it was an obvious result indicating this is a serious problem that needs to be resolved as shown in the findings. 100% of the respondents agreed on the necessity to upgrade of the current Wi-Fi connection. The tabulation of our findings is shown as below.

Figure 1: Usage frequency of WiFi connection in college

Figure 2: Rating of Importance of WiFi connection in college Figure 1 shows the respondents usage frequency of WiFi connection in college. 33 out of 40 respondents often use the WiFi connection in college, while only 1 respondent did not use WiFi. That one respondent has stated that he never used college WiFi because the connection is too slow. Figure 2 shows the ratings of importance of WiFi in college, ranging from 1(not important) to 5(very important). 35 respondents felt that having WiFi in college is very important. From both figures, it is clearly shown that using WiFi in college has become part of the residents live in campus. Plus, residents felt that WiFi in college is indeed very important. The main reason will be students need to browse the Internet for study purposes and to complete their assignments.

Figure 3: The time of WiFi usage in college Figure 3 shows the time when respondents start using college WiFi in a day. There are 12 respondents that used college WiFi during the night, contributing the highest percentage. Following closely behind are 10 respondents using the college WiFi at early dawn/late night. Morning and evening both have 8 users respectively, meanwhile only 1 college WiFi user during the afternoon. From the statistics, it is shown that most users are during the night-early dawn stretch because from a College 5 residents perspective, that is the time when most residents will be asleep and therefore the number of users will decrease, thus WiFi connection is faster. Other than that, most of them will be studying or completing their assignments during that time because in the morning-evening time, they will be busy with their classes and chores. Therefore as shown from the graph, the number of users during the morning-evening stretch is lesser compared to the night-early dawn stretch.

Types Websites visited by respondents via using college WiFi

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Social Youtube Goggle UM Others Network Websites

number of respondents

Figure 4: Reasons for browsing the Internet using college WiFi Figure 4 shows the reasons chosen by respondents for browsing the Internet using college WiFi. UM websites including Spectrum, MyUM, siswamail and Webpac lead the statistics with 36 respondents. Meanwhile, social network sites come in second at 34 respondents and Google at 33 users. Youtube recorded the lowest number of users at 12. The figure proves that students mostly use WiFi for study purposes. Not forgetting their social life which follows closely behind. The least is Youtube because from the response
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[refer Figure 5 and 6], the poor WiFi connection plus the fact that Youtube composed of movie files made Youtube a not preferable website to browse. Seeing that most residents browse UM websites and social networking sites, the server might have become overloaded and cause delayed response.

Figure 5: Problems faced while accessing the college WiFi Figure 5 shows the number of students face problem while accessing the college Wi-Fi

Figure 6: Types of problems faced while accessing the college WiFi Figure 5 shows that majority of the respondents face problem when accessing the college WiFi, recorded at 39 respondents, only 1 respondent did not face problem with the

WiFi connection. For Figure 6, respondents are allowed to pick more than 1 problem faced by them while accessing the college WiFi. Nearly all of the respondents face problems while accessing the college WiFi and with the selections of problem provided, which include unable to connect, connection too slow and unstable line, there was only a slight difference between all the selections. This is to show that the residents of College 5 are facing nearly all 3 stated WiFi problems.

Figure 7: Number of Respondents that Owns a Broadband

Figure 8: Reasons of using a broadband

Figure 7 shows the number of respondents that own broadband. 33 out of 40 respondents do not own a broadband, while only 7 of them own a broadband. All 7 broadband owners felt that the slow connection of WiFi in college is the sole reason of them owning a broadband.

Figure 9: Importance of getting a broadband Figure 9 shows the respondents opinion in the importance of getting a broadband. The 50:50 results have shown that broadband is neither very important nor unimportant. Half of the respondents felt that it is necessary to get a broadband for a faster browsing experience rather than waiting for an action to be taken regarding the slow WiFi connection. Meanwhile, the other half of the respondents felt that it is unnecessary to get a broadband as long as they can adjust their time of using the college WiFi. Plus, since the cost for the WiFi service has already been included in the fees, they are rather reluctant to pay extra for a broadband.

Figure 10: Rating of WiFi connection speed in college

Figure 11: The need to upgrade college WiFi Figure 10 shows the respondents rating on the WiFi connection speed in college, with scale 1 as the slowest to scale 5 representing the fastest. The response we received from the respondents regarding the speed of the college WiFi was in an unsatisfactory level seeing that most of them rated the speed as from slowest(1) to moderate(3). Plus, as seen from Figure 11, all respondents felt that the WiFi connection should be upgraded

Figure 12: The devices respondents used to access WiFi Figure 12 shows the devices respondents used to access the college WiFi. Most respondents use their laptop to access college WiFi mainly because laptop is more widely owned compared to smartphone and iPad/Galaxy Tab.

CAUSES
We believe the cause of this problem is due to because lack of receivers in the college. This results to poor Wi-Fi connection when everyone uses it at the same time. Besides that, the poor signal is also another factor which leads to this problem. For example, in University of Nottingham instead of Wi-Fi they supply students with high speed broadband connection in their residential college. On-Campus bedrooms have a data point that connects to the high speed broadband network and require an UTP Ethernet cable to connect your PC to those data points. However, the administrations have rectified the reasons for the possibilities of slow connection. According to the Administration of University of Nottingham (Appendix 2), the service will work with the specifications as low as stated here, but the performance may be very slow depending on the applications you are trying to use. According to Wikipedia, Wi-Fi connections can be disrupted or the internet speed lowered by having other devices in the same area. Many 2.4 GHz 802.11b and 802.11g access-points default to the same channel on initial startup, contributing to congestion on certain channels. Wi-Fi pollution, or an excessive number of access points in the area, especially on the neighboring channel, can prevent access and interfere with other devices' use of other access points, caused by overlapping channels in the 802.11g/b spectrum, as well as with decreased signal-to-noise
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ratio (SNR) between access points. This can become a problem in high-density areas, such as large apartment complexes or office buildings with many Wi-Fi access points.

CONSEQUENCES
The main effect is on the students access to gain information is delayed because they will not be able to browse the Internet in their college. Notes and sufficient information to aid the students in completing their assignment and tutorials are unavailable unless they use the WiFi system outside their college like in faculty or library which is very troublesome for the residents. According to Answers.com, children these days always have projects and sums beyond their level. So for extra help the students can use the web to search for these answers or for anything else they are not particularly sure of. Therefore Wi-Fi is an important device to enable the students to access to the Internet to produce better grades in studies.

SOLUTION
The best solution for this problem is to upgrade the current server from STREAMYX to UniFi, taking package BIZ20 with Dynamic IP. The explanations regarding the installation of new server will be further explained in Discussion (refer page 12)

OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this proposal is to upgrade the current Wi-Fi connection 5th Residential College increase the speed of the Wi-Fi connection and provide a more stable line to browse the Internet without spending hours waiting to be connected with the weak Wi-Fi connection.

DATA SOURCES
We have used quantitative method to collect the data through questionnaires which consists of 13 questions related to our research. We have distributed our questionnaire to 40 residents of 5th college consists of 20 males and 20 females coming from various courses and background. (Appendix 1 pg. 18)

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SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

In seeking the solutions for this problem, we wanted to upgrade the Wi-Fi connection without having any negative effects on the students and the administration. We wanted to suggest solution that would be safe for the residents of 5th Residential College as it involves radiation and unseen substances. We also considered the time to execute the solution without affecting the residents and to cause inconvenience to the residents. Besides that, we have looked through the cost of this solution.

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DISCUSSION AND SOLUTION

Method The best method is to upgrade the current server from STREAMYX to UniFi, taking package BIZ20 with Dynamic IP. Why choose UniFi? UniFi offers FTTx or FTTH which stands for Fiber To The House. FTTH is made up of optical fiber and is faster than normal copper cable. FTTH is desirable because it can carry high-speed broadband services integrating voice, data and video, and runs directly to the junction box at the building. Although providers like Maxis also offers FTTH, but after conducting research, UniFi has a more stable market in offering this service and their FTTH service is well develop, making them the leading company in FTTH. It is also proven by consumers UniFis internet service has promising results. Why choose package BIZ20? Currently the download/upload speed in college is approximately 8.6Mbps. With BIZ20, the download/ upload speed comes up to 20Mbps. Since UniFi can offer this package, it is tailormade for big companies which have lots of active internet users. Therefore, it is similar to the college situation where there are a lot of students often use the internet. Plus, it offers unlimited usage. Why package BIZ20 with Dynamic IP? BIZ20 package with Dynamic IP is much cheaper compared to the package offering Fixed IP, which is already the most crucial advantage. Fixed IP is very expensive and not worth the money Fixed IP is only used for web hosting, which is not a students priority. Why pay so much more for something the students dont need? Plus, students will not want to be caught hosting illegal websites neither do the college. If the IP address is blacklisted and blocked, the other users of the one and only IP address will be affected too.

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Actually there are not much of difference between Dynamic IP and Fixed IP, what matters most is the speed. So taking package BIZ20 with Dynamic IP is the most ideal choice.

Scheduling

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Figure above shows the Gantt cart of upgrading the college Wi-Fi system from STREAMYX to UniFi system in the fifth residential college. There are a total of five blocks in fifth residential college. From the survey conducted, many complaints have been received about the Wi-Fi connection. This problem has brought a lot of inconvenience especially when students want to use Wi-Fi to complete their assignments. Hence, a suggestion had been provided to solve this problem by upgrading the Wi-Fi system in the entire fifth college. First, a proposal of upgrading STREAMYX to UniFi is sent to the college principal on 1.1.2012 for approval. The proposal is sent one month before the plan because in hopes that the upgrading process can be carried out during the semester break. It takes two weeks to get the approval from the college principal. After getting the approval, we will start to make appointment at the point of registration. We give a range of two weeks for the company (TM) to arrange a time for upgrading and installation. TM UniFi Centre will confirm the appointment 24 hours prior to the agreed installation date and time. After that, UniFi technician will also contact the office for confirmation before going to the agreed address of installation. The process of appointment confirmation takes 3 days. We choose the date 4-2-2013 as our preferred date and time for UniFi installation because that will be during semester break and all the students have finished their examination. Thus, upgrading of UniFi in the college will not cause any disturbance to the residents. The upgrading process starts by the installation of FTTx (Fibre to the Home or Office) and is expected to take between 4-8 hours. As estimation, the installation of FTTx in every block will take one day. Hence, there will be a five days installation process. As part of the installation process, some minimal drilling may be required. We choose the semester break for this installation because it will not cause any sound pollution to the
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residents. Especially for the indoor installation, it requires more time for the technician to lay the internal fiber optic cable. After laying the cable, the equipment is said to be connected. After the equipment is tested and works properly, the upgrading of UniFi process in fifth college is done. Cost Estimated With UniFi, there is no installation and activation cost charged, no upgrading cost charged, no equipment charges, no deposit. Below is the cost for each block: Item 1. Modem (RM20 x 4) 2. Fibre optic wire (RM50/roll x 10) 3. Package BIZ20 with Dynamic IP Total cost for each block RM 80 500 359 939

Since there are 110 students in each block, therefore each student has to pay RM9.

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CONCLUSION
We would like to conclude that the Wi-Fi connection in 5th Residential College is indeed a problem that needs to be resolved. Based from the data gathered, this problem faced by majority of the residents and demands swift action to solve this pandemic in their college. The main for this proposal is to draw the attention of the administration of the college regarding this issue and to suggest a relevant, low- budget and suitable alternative to upgrade the Wi-Fi connection. Our best recommendation is to upgrade the current server from STREAMYX to UniFi, taking package BIZ20 with Dynamic IP. The relevance in this method is actually there are not much of difference between Dynamic IP and Fixed IP, what matters most is the speed. So taking package BIZ20 with Dynamic IP is the most ideal choice. We have done a survey on the on pricing of the new alternative which is relatively cheaper than the previous Wi-Fi server (as shown in Discussion). Lastly this server is more suitable for students as currently the download/upload speed in college is approximately 8.6Mbps. With BIZ20, the download/ upload speed comes up to 20Mbps. This enables students to download notes and information faster. This alternative is also beneficial for administration as it enables to download official forms faster for their office in the college.

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REFERENCES
1. Lim S.Y.(2011). Radio Propagation Prediction for Selected Locations on Sun-U Campus: A Ray Tracing Approach using Image Method. Retrieved from http://eprints.sunway.edu.my/98/1/ICS2011_09.pdf

2.

Wi-Fi. (2012). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1473553/Wi-Fi

3. Wi-Fi. (2012). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi 4. Information services. (2012). In The University of Nottingham Malaysia. Retrieved from http://www.nottingham.edu.my/IS/ITServices/StudentNetworkServices.aspx 5. Answers.com(2011) Retrieved from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_does_internet_and_www_help_students 6. Unifi Official Website. Retrieved from http://www.tm.com.my/unifi/home/Pages/packages-VIP.aspx

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APPENDIX
1) Sample questionnaire
Good day! We are conducting this survey to study the satisfactory rate of residents of 5 th Residential College on their Wi-Fi connection. Through this brief survey, you will be able to voice out your opinion and suggestion to meet your requirements. Your response will only be used for survey purposes. Thank you very much for your time and suggestions. Faculty: Course: Year: Questionnaire 1. ( ( ( 2. ( ( ( ( ( 3. ( ( ( ( ( How frequently do you use the Wi-Fi connection in your college? ) Often ) Sometimes ) Never When do you usually use the Wi-Fi connection in your college? ) Early Dawn/Late Night ) Morning ) Afternoon ) Evening ) Night Reasons for browsing Internet using the college Wi-Fi? (You may answer more than once) ) Social Network ) Youtube ) Google ) UM Spectrum/Siswamail/Myum/Webpac ) Others(please name):

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4. ( (

Do you face any problem while accessing the college Wi-Fi? ) Yes (if yes please proceed to question 5) ) No (if no please proceed to question 6)

5. What are the problems that do you face while accessing the college Wi-FI? ( ( ( ( 6. ( ( 7. ( ( ( 8. ( ( 9. ) Unable to connect to the Wi-Fi ) Connection too slow ) Unstable line ) Others, please specify Do you have a broadband? ) Yes (Please proceed to Question 7) ) No (Please proceed to Question 8) Why do you use the broadband? ) Wi-Fi too slow ) Already own a broadband ) Others (please name): Do you think it is necessary to get a broadband? ) Yes ) No Rate the Wi-Fi connection from 1 to 5. (1 is the slowest and 5 is the fastest) ( ) 1( ) 2( ) 3( ) 4( )5

10. Do want the Wi-Fi connection to be upgraded? ( ( ) Yes ) No

11. Rate the importance of Wi-Fi connection in college.(1 is not important and 5 is very important) ( )1( )2( ) 3( ) 4( )5

12. Which device do you use to access the Wi-Fi?( You may choose more than 1)

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( ( (

) Smart phone ) Laptop ) I-pad/ Galaxy tab

13. Suggestions to improve the Wi-Fi connection.

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2) University of Nottinghams Wi-Fi Server Standard

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