To finish my MSci Computer Science course at the University of St Andrews in 2024, I wrote a dissertation titled “A tool to design networks for entertainment venues”.
Supervised by Saleem Bhatti and supported by access to real equipment through the Students’ Union, this was a great opportunity to bring together my academic learning from the past few years of study, and professional learning from working on a variety of student, amateur, and professional events.
The tool takes into account different devices’ bandwidth requirements and other features to help you build a network map, highlighting possible issues with your system, and generating deployment information including drawings and sheets of configuration information. The data used in the application is sourced from a combination of manufacturer specifications and real-world measurement of devices.
This is very much a research project and not a final tool, so the application is not currently published online. However, through the development of the prototype and some user testing, it looks like there is demand for a tool like this, and the prototype increased users’ confidence in designing and planning networks for their work.
You can read the dissertation online or download a PDF to read more about the design, development, and implementation of the system.