Every year, Carl Powell, the Chief Information Officer for Eastern Michigan University, holds a talk at the Halle library. Coffee with the CIO is a chance for faculty and students to sit down with the CIO and ask questions about wifi, security, new technology and the tech industry in general.
The conversation went over some worthwhile topics — from the state of wifi, to drones, to the NSA, to preventing the spread of malware, viruses and Trojans.
“It's not just the volume of traffic,” Powell said. “It's the volume of meaningless traffic. It's getting massive. With everything being sent over the Internet, how do you wade through all the junk to the stuff that would be pertinent?”
Powell said that the university does not access student or staff data. It is primarily concerned with preventing spam. If one spam bot gets into a EMU email account, it will just keep sending spam across the internet, and EMU will get flagged as a spam account, which would adversely affect everyone with an emich.edu email account.
One student asked about wifi and why it is so spotty out of buildings.
Powell said the problem was that the overlaying infrastructure and questions about where to put the antennas. Wifi is provided on campus by a series of antennas which are housed in domes. You can see them in ceilings. The wifi signal comes from a traditional cable, which goes to antenna, leaves the dome and connects to your device. They have a limited range and the challenge is to figure out where to put them.
