Procurement for HSRN Wireless
Overview
Procurement of equipment for wireless connectivity involves consideration of general computer quality, as well as ensuring integrated wireless network cards can make use of the increased speeds, or purchasing dedicated wireless network cards or external adapters.
An HSRN WiFi 6E router will need to have been installed specifically in your lab space to use HSRN WiFi. HSRN WiFi is not the same SSID (name) as NYU-NET WiFi. If you do not know if there is HSRN WiFi in your lab, please reach out to us.
Older WiFi equipment will typically use the 2.4 GHz band and the 5 GHz band, however WiFi 6 and onward introduces the 6 GHz band, allowing higher throughput and lower latency, however has shorter range. Equipment will typically need to stay in the same room to have adequate connectivity.
Although HSRN currently uses WiFi 6E, WiFi 7 is increasing in adoption and has drastically higher throughput capabilities. We recommend purchasing WiFi 7 equipment whenever possible. This will be backwards compatible.
General Requirements
Machines targetted for wireless connectivity should be newer, standard or higher end desktops, workstations, laptops or IoT devices. While there is no hard rule, generally machines older than 5 years would not benefit from HSRN wireless unless they are higher end.
Desktops and Workstations
Desktops and workstations targeted for HSRN wireless could use a PCIe wireless network card for connectivity. Installing a PCIe card involves opening your computer and placing the card into an available PCIe slot. Each network card will have a different minimum requirement for PCIe, generation and number of lanes (x4, x8, x16). Please check your specific network card and what your equipment has available. Generally, a PCIe 3.0 x8 slot should suffice. This information can be seen right above the slot on your motherboard. If you require assistance, please feel free to reach out to your IT department or to us directly and we can assist in determining this for you.
If you have a Apple Studio or similar desktop, this may come with WiFi 6E/7 capability already installed. Please check your equipment specifications. If your Apple hardware does not have WiFi 6E capability natively, it is NOT possible to install a PCIe card typically, and you will need to use a external adapter (See next section on Laptops).
Resources to install Network Interface Cards can be found online here (FS) and here (Youtube).
Laptops
Laptops targeted for HSRN connectivity should use a USB to WiFi 6E/7 external adapter. These can be USB-C, Thunderbolt, etc. Simply plug in the external adapter, ensure that the adapter is recognized by your system, and you can begin using the HSRN. Note that the adapter itself may be hot while in use. Please ensure that the external adapter you are purchasing is compatible with your Operating System, specifically if using MacOS or Linux.
NIC Recommendations
For wireless NICs, we recommend: