are wireless projectors just a bandwidth hog?

[techidave]

is anyone using wireless projectors in the classroom.  They have come down in price quite a bit.  But, I was wondering what wifi projection will do to my wifi network that has ipads and laptops on it.  Almost all of the rooms have an access point in them.

I am looking at Epson EX5220 to use in our school. Epson

Does wireless projection take a lot of bandwidth?

Looking for some feedback here. 

Thanks
Dave

[Shades]

Well, no. But any videostream is bound to gobble up bandwidth, no matter where it goes. A videostream you would like to show on a beamer has a big resolution and (too much) compression is likely not desired if picture quality is of concern. If the stream contains a text-based powerpoint presentation with voice over, less bandwidth is consumed.

Besides, what kind of WiFi is in the classroom? Has each room an allotted amount of bandwidth or do you apply a fair-use-policy?

[techidave]

We are using Ubiquit Unifi Pro for an access points.  Each room has their own AP.  If I am remembering correctly, we do have some limits in place.  I will be in that building on Tuesday and will try to double check for sure.

[techidave]

It would be power points most likely without voice overs.  Also they will show you tube videos.

[Shades]

So....you want to use these beamers as torture devices on your students?

As you might have guessed...not a big fan of PP presentations, especially by people who think they have a clue about presentation or "readers".

[Shades]

Video-streams with mostly static images shouldn't consume that much bandwidth. Most PP presentations use those, so that wouldn't be my biggest concern regarding bandwidth consumption.

Youtube video's are a different matter and depend on selected resolution and the school's bandwidth. Especially when each class room needs to have their own YT feed and the school itself needs the bandwidth to communicate with the main administration servers on geological different locations.  Prepare to be in shouting matches between all school departments suddenly vying for bandwidth.

That is of course when the school has no fiber connection(s) to the internet.

[x16wda]

That is of course when the school has no fiber connection(s) to the internet.

I hadn't even thought of that - I was only thinking about the projection needs. Add source acquisition and it's a double whammy. Unless you're streaming from a phone or tablet that isn't going to eat any wifi.

[40hz]

You could always put the projectors on their own wifi network by adding an additional access point. That's what AT&T does with their home UVerse setups. Your internet wifi goes through your main residential router. Your wifi TV boxes use a separate access point plugged into your main residential router.

This arrangement won't increase available bandwidth on the WAN side. So if you're regularly sucking down heavy outside media streams you may need to pay your ISP to increase your download capacities.

But on the LAN side it should definitely help since it restricts all projectors to a single port on the main router so it won't saturate the WAN side or the main LAN - but it will still give the projectors their own full capacity wifi network.  

If you have dual-band installed you can always just give one band to the projectors too. Most places that have dual-band wifi only use one band. The other is either left unused or set up for guest access.

[Innuendo]

Uverse TV set-top boxes use wifi? Really? Holy cow...I can see that working when you have one HDTV in the family room that everyone congregates around to watch TV together, but what happens when the DVR kicks in recording two (or more) HD programs at once? While Junior is upstairs also watching an HD channel in his bedroom? I see things falling apart after a certain point...unless AT&T is compressing the heck out of their channels, but that's only going to lead to other compromises in quality.

[40hz]

^We have two HDTVs both connected via wireless.

For UVerse programming and recording you'd never know it wasn't hardwired. I'm guessing they did some network tweaks and optimizations with the Ciscos they provide. And I'm sure they give their own services top packet priority on their network. The DVR is handled by the main box AFAICT. So regardless of where you told it to record from, it streams it anywhere. Never had a hiccup. Yet.  

As far as compression goes, that's one approach. But there's other tricks you could use such as intelligent preemptive caching, QoS tweaks, and buffering too. But don't expect AT&T to tell you much about how they do it. That's their little competitive secret.

And yes, it will always break after a point. Which is why they only support three or four (I forget) wifi TV routers per account. So figure 4 TVs max. There doesn't seem to be a published threshold for wired however. But that would likely be whatever your network topology would allow on 1GB Ethernet. I never tested it, but inbound seems to run near T1 speed on the WAN end.

[40hz]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the UVerse set top boxes they sent us can also can be set up as wired via the RJ45 jack on the back.

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[techidave]

Shades, I am not a big fan of PPT either, especially when the presenter only reads what is on the slide.  I am perfectly capable of doing my own reading ... don't need to be read to.