In August 2024, the Netz-AK will turn 20 years old.
Now, at the end of 2023, we would like to roughly present our plans for the coming year.
After some restructurings between the network of the Studierendenwerk and us, we hope be able to start in the year by providing Wi-Fi to the first buildings. We would like to begin due to the very poor mobile reception in the dormitories on Geissweg in Tübingen. As part of the Wi-Fi expansion, the dormitories will also be simultaneously upgraded to Gigabit in the rooms. Additionally, a new building on Fruwirthstrasse in Hohenheim is expected to be completed, which we are also allowed to equip with Wi-Fi and Gigabit.
Over the course of the year, we would like to upgrade all houses to Gigabit and also increase the nodes to 10 G to avoid bottlenecks.
Currently, as of December 2023, we are only four, but we hope for the return of our fifth member from the Erasmus program and possibly some voluntary support.
There is a lot to do, and you can support us with little technical knowledge, by writing good tutorials or adding some social skills. =)
You are also welcome to learn a lot from us. We do not offer a direct course for which you can earn ECTS points, but you can participate in the expansion and operation of a not-so-small network with just under 6000 rooms. A challenge is that our network is spread over 180 km when laid out in a row.
We document what we do, operate and expand the monitoring of the network to detect failures early and ideally replace defective components before they fail. We help you get your routers and all devices online and operate them securely.
Whether we will finally introduce IPv6 in 2024 or get closer to implementing Eduroam in communal areas and open spaces around the buildings is still open and depends entirely on how much manpower we can muster, but we are confident to make further progress.
Our student members are usually generously supported by the Studierendenwerk with extended “Wohnzeit”.
We are very proud to operate one of the most cost-efficient student networks, where residents have paid significantly less than 3 euros per room and month as part of their rent for fast internet access over the past decades.
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