As Stanford University continues to build and boom, Rowell Dionicio, network engineer at Stanford University, is busily working on the bugs that clog up speed and connectivity with the campus’ growing number of wirelessly connected devices.

“It’s a tough one to crack. I hear those complaints, I get them, and I try to fix them as quickly as I can. But it’s one of those things where you can’t see it, and I think wireless is just such a robust technology that it’ll work even in the worst scenarios,” Dionicio said.

Dionicio spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Lauren Cooney (@lcooney), founder and chief executive officer of Spark Labs Consulting LLC, at the DevNet Create event in Mountain View, California. They discussed the hurdles to setting up wireless networks on a college campus and noteworthy trends in the industry. (* Disclosure below.)

Enhancing efficiencies in service

Overall, Stanford has a healthy upstream, and it’s getting larger — there are 10 gigabytes for some parts of the campus, and Dionicio recalled there are around 40,000 unique devices on wireless. His team is exploring how to widen the coverage map.

“We have to do a lot of testing, ask a lot of questions. What’s the use case? Where do they want it? Is it even possible?” he explained. “Maybe there’s location-based services that we want to roll out to the campus. That’s a big topic amongst the industry right now. And then efficiency as well; how can I deploy faster if it’s just me working on a certain project?”

Wireless connectivity is not available in every corner of the campus, Dionicio explained. And he also faces the challenge of budgeting decisions and security issues he’s unaware of.

“People start throwing devices … that we don’t even know about, so they’ll want [internet of things] everything. Whatever you can put wireless on, they want that,” he said.

Dionicio is attending DevCreate to learn reporting tools, Python, and comparing other devices that can be compatible with other campuses.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the DevNet Create 2018 event. (*Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for DevNet Create. Neither Cisco Systems Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE