Going beyond the traditional coverage-oriented Wi-Fi network design, the recent Wi-Fi networks are designed for high traffic demand with high density deployments. A university campus environment is particularly unique in that a large number of users with multiple heterogeneous devices demand high capacity and performance from a wireless network over a wide geographical area. From a network management perspective, not only should the network support heterogeneous Wi-Fi protocols and devices, but high-density access points (APs) are needed to handle the high traffic demands. To meet the rising demands Wi-Fi AP upgrades are deployed incrementally over an extended period to cover the vast area found in a campus setting, which is different from a building-level Wi-Fi network. In this paper, we present a measurement study to bring forth wireless network management issues faced during incremental Wi-Fi deployment on a university campus network. We discuss various design considerations given to incremental deployments of Wi-Fi 802.11 (ac) including replacing older Wi-Fi versions, and addressing compatibility, data rate, coverage, and performance concerns. In addition, we perform pre-and-post upgrade evaluations using different network performance analysis tools. This study will shed light on heterogeneous large-scale Wi-Fi network management issues, as these will become applicable with the increasing prevalence of large metro area wireless networks.

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