Forecast 2014: Boost your mobile bandwidth

The move also cut maintenance costs by 30%. "As the national conversation plays out about college affordability, this matters greatly by helping us maintain affordable tuition," Howard says.

Next, the Armstrong team focused on the network switches and pipes between buildings, bumping them from 100Mbps to 1Gbps to handle the increased traffic from the new wireless access points.

Expecting demand to continue its current trajectory, IT built in enough headroom in on-premises gear and with the school's Internet service to support demand for the next three to five years. "We're not at 10Gbps levels yet, but we could get there and we are ready," Howard says.

In addition, IT is evaluating 802.11ac access points, which boast gigabit speeds for wireless connections, as an option for the next three-year refresh.

Opening the floodgates on the pipes is one part of Howard's road map; the other is using caching to reduce back-and-forth traffic. For instance, caching would be a big help with MicrosoftMicrosoft's Patch Tuesday, which can strain the network as each device tries to download software patches and updates. Instead of clogging the Internet connection, users could grab what they need from a cache on local servers. Alles zu Microsoft auf CIO.de