Inventum Archives

Campus WiFi

Connect Your Students to the World!

The concept of online learning and self-teaching has been widely adopted. With the rising popularity of online courses, students now expect to be able to connect to their educational resources at anytime, anywhere. From online live lectures and webinars to e-Books and other online resources, it’s clear that the Internet has become a powerful teaching tool in education.

Wi-Fi connectivity helps in seamless teaching and learning. The role of wireless campus for the enhancement of teaching learning process is vast. With Wi-Fi access throughout the campus, information is just a click away. The wireless campus also supports everyday activities seamlessly in classroom contexts.

Universities & colleges need a flexible, cost-effective and future-proof network infrastructure that enables students and staff to connect with ease and throughout the whole campus.

Key Challenges in a Campus

Nowadays, institutions compete for students, and campus experience plays a large part in the decision-making process for prospective undergraduates and postgraduates students. Students demand high-quality, reliable Wi-Fi experiences not only in the classroom but also during free time when they’re streaming Netflix, YouTube etc. or accessing online resources. More and more, potential and current students judge the quality of a university by its wireless network, and an under performing Wi-Fi network can impact the institution’s bottom line.

For university CIOs and their IT staff, the design and upkeep of campus Wi-Fi networks was once a moderately straightforward undertaking. Today, however, situation is totally different. Campuses are now facing key challenges:

I. A larger user base is trying to connect

There are masses of users (students, Faculty members & guests) trying to connect to College Wi-Fi and most of them have at least two devices that they want to connect. With demands like that across campuses, colleges need to take steps to ensure that students are able to access what they need for education and entertainment.

If your institution isn’t accounting for this vast user base and its ramifications in terms of bandwidth, coverage and security, you can bet that students and staff are experiencing problems with your network.

II. Bandwidth management

One of the biggest challenges that most campuses deal with are issues surrounding bandwidth. Some users consume all the bandwidth and other are left with no connection or poor connectivity. In order to keep up with your users expectations & demands, location based access restrictions for students and other similar policy controls are some of the controls that campuses need.

III. Accountability & Content Filtering

Complying with local laws and ensuring objectionable content is blocked is a key requirement of campus networks. There are today thousands of websites linked with terror networks and cybercrime which may adversely impact the student community. With growing security concerns, particularly from unverified visitors in public hotspots, most campus owners are looking for ways to track the network activity of Wi-Fi users. Having logs to investigate cybercrimes is critical for any public hotspot.

IV. BYOD Brings Increased Demand and Challenges

The fact is BYOD puts a heavy strain on a campus’ bandwidth, and dealing with the issue requires more than simply telling users to limit their usage. Does your wireless networking infrastructure enable your IT professionals to have a high level of application visibility and control? Have you developed policies to prioritize different applications and devices accessing the network? If the answer is no, this is a pretty big indicator that your campus Wi-Fi network may be failing and you need to take action now.

V. Your Network Is Unsecure

There’s no room for error when it comes to protecting student and staff information, so it’s crucial to ensure that your campus Wi-Fi network is protected from cyber threats like ransomware and other dangerous intrusions. Securing your wireless network must be a top priority when you’re dealing with hundreds to thousands of users connecting through multiple devices at every moment of the day. If you’re allowing guests to connect to the main network and you’re not ensuring robust protection against intrusions, your campus Wi-Fi network is failing.

VI. Monetize

Campuses often act as an ISP providing paid broadband services to on campus student housing and usage limited monthly plans. Managing the recurrent billing and collection of such services is a key challenge to monetization of services.

VII. Portal & Dashboard

Users also need a Self-service tools to check their network activity, view usage, pay bills and change network passwords.

Inventum’s offering allows your campus to benefit from fast, reliable Internet service. Now, institutions can flexibly connect staff and students with ease, while enjoying peace of mind that access is secure and controlled.

Bandwidth Management — **Inventum All-in-one solution for hotspots**

Inventum’s MSG gateways offer a single-stop solution for campus networks. The all-in-one appliance combines the functions of a router, firewall, NAC, user directory & more in a ready-to-deploy solution. Administrators can directly connect WAN & LAN links to the appliance for end-to-end operations & management of their Wi-Fi networks.

It also offers a built in portal and self care system. All new customers are redirected to a login page where they can first register using forms or a simple mobile number with OTP verification code. Prepay PIN, scratch card, Internet plan purchase using credit card or roaming from aggregators such as iPass are all supported. Returning customers are seamlessly recognised with zero touch access.

It can also set a speed limit per student, limit download volume and ensure fair bandwidth distribution. Built-in firewall secures the network, filtering content and keeping browsing logs for legal compliance.

For end point connectivity, Institutions can also use Inventum’s udaya series of products which are all managed centrally from a public cloud including configuration, monitoring, captive portals, SMS sign-on, payment gateway interfaces and analytics.

Campuses with multiple locations can consider our zero capex cloud solution to get started immediately. The offering includes virtual routers as part of the subscription allowing any server on campus to be used as a gateway router for the hotspot(s). All other elements are managed via the UNIFY™ Cloud platform with no additional on-site hardware required. All you need are Wi-Fi access points to get started!

Key Benefits

Easy setup & management
Easily scalable
Excellent price-to-performance value
Many Models to Choose From

Is your campus Wi-Fi quality affecting your rating? Contact us

Inventum receives WiFi Leadership Awards 2019

Inventum Technologies has been conferred with the 3^nd My India WiFi India Leadership Award 2019 for “Best WiFi OSS/BSS Solution” at the recently concluded My India WiFi Summit & Awards 2019 at The Imperial Hotel, New Delhi on Aug. 20, 2019 organised by DigiAnalysys.

This award recognizes Inventum as one of the top most OSS/BSS Solution provider in India. This is Inventum second year in a row. Inventum had received My India WiFi India Leadership Award 2018 for “Best Cloud WiFi Solution”.

Mr. Anil Walia (extreme left), CSMO, Inventum, receiving the award from Mr. TR Dua (centre), Director General, TAIPA accompanied by Mr. Pradeep Kushwah (extreme right), Marketing Manager, Inventum

The awards ceremony was attended by imminent industry leaders including Dinesh Tyagi, CEO, CSC SPV; Sarvesh Singh, CMD, BBNL; A Seshagiri Rao, CMD, TCIL; Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director, C-DOT; K Alagesan, CMD, ITI and many other dignitary.

Mr. Sachin Mehra (extreme left), CEO Inventum, receiving the award for “Best Cloud WiFi Solution” from Mr. Anuj Jain (centre), President, Reliance Jio accompanied by Mr. Anil Walia (extreme right), CSMO, Inventum

Speaking on the event, Mr. Anil Walia, Chief Sales Officer, Inventum, says “We are delighted to receive the My India WiFi India Leadership Award 2019 for Best WiFi OSS/BSS Solution category. This coveted award is result of our continous efforts of improving ISPs & WISPs customers experience and providing them a end-to-end solution.”

Inventum’s UNIFY is a complete stack of billing & operations management (B/OSS) software. The key modules for the stack includes AAA, Subscriber CRM, Financial Accounting, Prepay & Postpaid Billing, Reseller Management, Electronic Wallet System and many more.

Inventum is a leading provider of fixed & wireless data networks technology with a strong made in India portfolio. Inventum builds routers, cloud solution, security and software systems that power some of the world’s largest communication networks. Inventum products are used by mobile operators, FTTH providers, ISP, Wi-Fi hotspots, Airports, Hospitality, Convention Centres and Smart Cities.

My India WiFi India Awards were instituted by DigiAnalysys Media in 2017 to recognise and celebrate visionary enterprises across industry segments and to focus on highlighting key trends and technologies in the WiFi segment.

Why Free Basics & Airtel Zero are bad for India

“Free Basics is the new colonialism, its the new East India Company…”, said someone on television the other night about Facebook’s charitable initiative. I’m thinking to myself, there are no free lunches, so why is this even a debate?

Free Basics is an old debate about Net Neutrality. Its been defeated by regulation in the West, but in India we like debate. Facebook has made it so easy to sign a petition supporting Free Basics that hovering over the banner in your FB feed is enough! Many have accidentally succumbed.

Policy makers, telecoms, COAI & even TRAI are favouring a trial. They cite Delhi’s odd even car trial to reduce pollution as a precedent. Exactly how toxic pollution that is killing people compares with Free Basics eludes me.

To understand Free Basics, its first important to understand the Internet eco-system.

First The Basics

I see the Internet as a large reservoir of water. There are the content providers (Facebook & Google) who pump water into the reservoir and then us, the consumers, who tap in with little pipes drawing what water we need. The plumbing is owned by the telecom operators who charge both the content providers and subscribers for their respective pipes. The content companies make money from the subscribers who receive a service that they value and life comes a full circle.

Neutrality is in the fact that everyone gets the same water, just more or less, faster or slower. Everyone pays and none of us get champagne even if we can afford it!

Strange Bed Fellows

Circa 2000, the new new content companies were fighting tooth and nail with telecom operators. They wanted lower bandwidth prices, fatter pipes, unlimited always on Internet. The underlying motive was to drive faster Internet penetration leading to greater valuations which were based on unique user visits. Slow growth in Internet connectivity directly impacted their future.

AOL’s merger with Time Warner was an attempt to solve the slow growth problem and create a behemoth that built its own pipes and content. It has since become a corporate disaster case study.

Is Free Basics a similar attempt? Of course it is, just that the theatre is the third world. India still needs to connect billions and Facebook doesn’t have the patience to wait for our telecom providers and government to deliver connectivity. It wants to guarantee it’s market dominance in India’s future. Not charity, just plain old profit motive.

What is different this time is that Indian telecom providers want to join forces with Free Basics. Let’s try and understand their game.

How Internet Providers Makes Money

The provider game is simple. Lay a big fat pipe to the reservoir, say 1 gigabit (1,000 megabits). Then we split this pipe between a 1,000 paying subscribers, each sold a 10 megabit connection. Hold on, 1,000 x 10 is 10,000 megabits or 10 gigabits, so how do we fit all of them into the original 1 gigabit reservoir pipe? By betting on the fact that not all 1,000 subscribers will download at the same time. This is what we call oversubscription and this is how we make money.

Subscribers only see the ill effects of oversubscription during peak hours when everyone starts downloading and consequently everything slows down. Oversubscription to my mind is fair game, so long as it doesn’t mess with the end deliverable.

Content Differentiation & Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)

So how does a service provider differentiate content? How does your ISP create differential pricing?

DPI technology has been widely used by ISPs and telecoms to look inside your Internet traffic. Most people don’t know that their ISP is already differentiating P2P & torrent content, throttling it down to improve oversubscription and pack in more paying customers.

Free Basics, Airtel Zero and other similar initiatives all use DPI to control ALL your flows, throttle & (eventually) charge depending on what you access.

Think of it like a new toll gate for every website you wish to go to. Its only a matter of time that premiums will be linked to peak hour traffic!

How Airtel Zero Would Make Money

Airtel Zero is simply a differential pricing game. Zero charge for curated content, delivered faster, regular charge for everything else. An express lane of sorts, for the wealthy content owners to expand their market share while telecom operators add to their profits by charging the content providers for delivery. Of course, the real game all along is control over the medium and eventually the customer.

Imagine if your electricity company could charge you on the basis of which appliance you used in your house? Large appliance makers would subsidise electricity giving them an unfair advantage in the marketplace, making it tougher for smaller appliance companies to compete. And in time, the nexus of the appliance and electricity companies would monopolise the market, affecting all consumers.

How Facebook Would Make Money

If Facebook is the only channel you can watch on TV, what would advertisers be willing to pay? You do the math.

With nearly a billion people waiting to come online in India, Facebook wants to accelerate connectivity, while ensuring they become the de facto medium with a captive audience.

No thank you, but India is done with colonialism. We can pay for our citizens to come online in good time.

Conclusion

The Internet is a great leveller because you cannot differentiate upon the end use or user. Governments should focus on building affordable broadband services accessible to all citizens with a view to empower and provide a level playing field to all stakeholders. TRAI & COAI should stop pushing agendas that are less than charitable.

Telecom operators must focus on building capacity, improving service quality and ridding themselves of a monopolistic mindset. Data is growing rapidly and companies like Airtel have benefitted greatly from 3G growth. If anything, they are responsible for driving voice tariffs to global lows and now trying to slice and dice the Internet is poor strategy.

Facebook should realise that free Facebook, WhatsApp & Instagram ain’t making anyone smarter. And basics without its competitor Google is a dead give away!

Full disclosure – I work for Inventum, one of the only carrier-class Indian router manufacturers. The company provides Broadband Network Gateways (BNG), DPI appliances, Routers, Billing & Provisioning systems for telecoms and Internet Service Providers. The views expressed here are my personal experiences as an entrepreneur in the Indian high-technology space.