Nichole is a cybersecurity student from the Philippines, currently studying at the University of Hawaii West Oahu. She is passionate about understanding technology and its impact on the world, and is driven to make a positive contribution to digital security. When Nichole is not studying she enjoys playing video games and reading books. She is focused on developing technical skills and understanding the ethical and societal aspects of cybersecurity.
Home Island: Oahu
High School: Moanalua High School
Institution when accepted: University of Hawaii West Oahu
Project Title: Optimizing Wireless Connectivity: a Wi-Fi Upgrade Study for Subaru Telescope
Project Site: Subaru Telescope, Hilo HI
Mentor: Brendan Hora
Project Abstract:
The Subaru Telescope base facility currently has relied on Wi-Fi 4 access points since 2016, leading to slow data transmission and frequent network congestion in high-density environments. The observatory staff in the base facility deal with large volumes of data and video conferences, taking up a lot of bandwidth that Wi-Fi 4 struggles to provide. In addition, modern applications and devices are capable of faster and more reliable connections. Current Wi-Fi technologies, such as Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7, offer higher data transfer rates and better performance in dense environments. The project aims to enhance the current Wi-Fi deployment by assessing its performance and determining what systems are optimal for upgrading Subaru’s Wi-Fi network. To do this, we first generated a coverage map of the current Wi-Fi deployment to identify the current system’s strengths and weaknesses. A digital blueprint of the base facility was also uploaded into UniFi Design Center (e.g. visualization software) to facilitate the planning and visualization of the upgraded Wi-Fi infrastructure. Various access points (APs) were evaluated in the Design Center to determine the most suitable upgrade for improving network efficiency and performance. A network server software was installed on a NUC running Ubuntu to configure the access points and create a test environment. Once the optimal APs were identified, two units were tested on their mesh capability and handover between each other. We were able to conclude that U6 Enterprise is the most suitable upgrade for the base facility due to its 10 spatial streams and 6GHz support, as well as its wide coverage.