A comparative analysis of the user behavior in academic WiFi networks

Wireless local area networks (WLAN) are common in universities and their popularity grows every day. Understanding the trends in the use of these networks (i.e. how much, when and where traffic is present) is becoming more relevant. Interesting results can be extracted by analyzing WLAN traces from real scenarios. In this work, three buildings are studied on two campuses in Barcelona (Spain) and its surroundings. This is the first study providing the user behavior in a European campus. Similar trends are observed in the three buildings, despite the different amount of users, purpose of the building and size of the campus. Daily and weekly patterns are shown. The population accessing the networks is mostly composed of infrequent users: less than half of the devices access the WLAN more than four days during the three months studied. Many users visiting one building associate with only one access point: despite the widespread use of lightweight devices many users are static. The main difference among different buildings is the fidelity of users: users on a small campus are more likely to reappear on different days than on a large campus, where the population is more heterogeneous. The results of this analysis provide general tools for characterizing campus-wide WLAN and a better understanding of usage and performance issues in a mature wireless network in Europe.