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Higher Ed Boosts Wireless Access By Robert L. Scheier, senior editor, Triangle Publishing Services Co. Inc., December 2006 For colleges and universities, providing wireless access to faculty, staff and students isn't a question of whether to do it, but how fast they can do it. Students arrive on campus having had cell phones "since they were 12 or 13 years old," says Jay Dominick, CIO at Wake Forest University. "They've seen their parents running around with BlackBerries. Mostly what we're trying to do is keep up with what's become an increasingly mobile lifestyle." Wake Forest is one of a number of schools that issue a student a wireless notebook computer when they register so they can access the school's information resources, conduct online research, communicate with study groups or collaborate with their peers no matter where they are on campus. That's why colleges and universities spent $624 million on wireless products and services in 2005, according to Industry Analyst Roopa Shree at research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. Wireless networks reached 51 percent of all college classrooms in 2006, compared to about 43 percent a year earlier and 31 percent in 2004, according to a 2006 survey conducted by The Campus Computing Project. More than two-thirds—69 percent—of campuses had a strategic plan for deploying wireless as of fall 2006, up from 64 percent in 2005 and 53 percent in 2004. Wider Coverage Ben Gibson, director of product marketing at Cisco Systems Inc.'s Wireless & Mobility business unit, sees many colleges and universities now seeking to achieve 100-percent wireless campus coverage. They're using technologies such as "hardened" access points that can operate outdoors and "mesh" networks that automatically hand off traffic among access points to maintain network performance. Old challenges, like security and the need for site surveys, are steadily becoming more manageable. Some observers, such as Kenneth Green, founding director of the Campus Computing Project, argue that site survey tracking is still necessary because of the confusing and hard to predict usage patterns on campuses. Full-time students aged between 18 and 22 represent only about 20 percent of students in American colleges and universities, says Green, which means many appear on campus and need wireless access only on weekends or evenings. Usage patterns are also hard to predict because colleges and universities face big challenges in starting—and ending—user accounts as large numbers of students enroll, leave for a semester and then return. Gibson says software that ships with Cisco's wireless LAN controllers "can automate a good deal of the channel planning and channel mapping and coverage process" once a baseline survey has been done. Cisco's wireless LAN controllers also monitor the wireless LAN in real time, he says, and automatically compensate for events such as the failure of an access point.
At the University of Notre Dame, which has covered "every square foot" of the campus with more than 1,200 access points over the last five years, Chief Technology Officer Dewitt Latimer has found himself doing fewer formal site surveys over time. The more access points he deploys, the more skilled his staff has become at quickly estimating where they need to go. "As we did more and more buildings, we became better skilled at the RF design and layout of access points," he says. "My guys could pretty much look at a building blueprint, understand the building construction...and within 50 feet or so, get the right locations of the access points for optimal coverage." Another factor, he says, is the rapidly falling prices of access points. This makes it less expensive to simply buy more access points to help ensure adequate coverage than going to the cost of a site survey. In addition, says Latimer, the self-management capabilities offered by current wireless LAN controllers reduce the need for site surveys by automatically adjusting radio signal strengths through the optimal nodes to maximize coverage and network performance. Maintaining proper security, long one of the prime concerns about the use of Wi-Fi on campus, can be eased by using the encryption that ships with most wireless access points and creating "guest" accounts that provide access to the Web but not to sensitive campus data. New Solutions New technology is steadily making Wi-Fi faster and more secure for users and easier to manage for the IT staff. The latest Wi-Fi standard protocol is 802.11g, which provides transmission speeds as high as 54 megabits per second (Mbps), compared to the 11 Mbps provided by the earlier 802.11b standard. In two to three years, the 802.11n standard will boost speeds to close to 100 Mbps, Gibson says. As campuses roll out more access points, securing and managing them becomes more important. Vendors have responded with technologies such as "lightweight" wireless access points, which allow centralized management of the wireless environment from a single controller, and "mesh" networks, in which access points continuously communicate with each other to determine the best route data should take to deliver the best performance. Advocates claim that such centralized management can help detect and block security breaches like denial of service attacks, which flood all the access points in the WLAN at the same time to disrupt service. Many wireless network products also allow administrators to create "student" or "guest" accounts that provide Web access only through a "captive portal," a Web site that requires the user to log in and thus allows the school to control and audit wireless Web access. Another option is creating separate LAN segments to serve the wireless transmitters, providing varying levels of access to sensitive campus systems or varying levels of encryption, depending on the user's identity and role. Future Some schools, such as Dartmouth College, are moving toward providing voice services over their wireless networks. However, such wireless VoIP requires highly reliable Wi-Fi networks. Such networks can minimize interference among neighboring access points, quickly and securely transfer calls among WLANs as users move among them, and help ensure voice calls get the bandwidth they need to preserve sound quality. Cisco's wireless networks, for example, can easily handle the hand-offs required as a user moves among access points, Gibson says. But few campuses are offering it, he adds, because few students have phones that can handle both cellular and Wi-Fi connections. And, few schools provide the "truly pervasive" wireless coverage that helps ensure calls don't get dropped. The widespread use of WiMAX, a wireless broadband communication protocol with a range of up to 30 miles, is also probably "still two or three years out" because of a lack of standards, Gibson says. Notre Dame's Latimer agrees that WiMAX is several years off, and he is skeptical about whether wireless VoIP will ever be practical. He continues to upgrade the school's earlier 802.11b-only access points with the later, faster 802.11a/b/g-capable access points as well as replacing older access points with newer lightweight clients for easier, more centralized management. That's important because his "staff head count hasn't grown" despite the tremendous growth in wireless use. Another important aspect of wireless communication is the use of cellular, for data as well as voice. After a long history of keeping cellular towers off-campus, Notre Dame has negotiated with wireless carriers to hide 16 stealthy cellular antennas behind building facades and in other inconspicuous locations. Students, faculty and staff are happy with the higher signal strength, Latimer says, while the carriers enjoy an increase in billable revenues. The amount of data traffic coming over the cellular network has been a surprise even for the carriers, Latimer says. After the new antennas brought cellular access to areas such as the football stadium, he says, the carriers had to allocate a greater percentage of overall system capacity for data as Notre Dame fans checked the scores of other games even while watching the Fighting Irish right in front of them. With capabilities like that, it's no wonder colleges and universities are pushing for more, and better, wireless access.
Robert L. Scheier is a senior editor for Triangle Publishing Services Co. Inc. of Newton, MA. He has more than 20 years of experience writing about information technology and its use in business. For more information about the article, Mr. Scheier or Triangle, please send us an e-mail. (c) 2007, Triangle Publishing Services Co. Inc. All Rights Reserved. Online Resources Meru Networks' white paper on wireless LANs in higher education Case study: Towson University Deploys State-of-the-Art IP and Wireless Infrastructure From Cisco Cisco Systems Inc.'s LAN Solutions Guide for Higher Education/Universities Proxim Corp.'s white paper: Wireless Technology in Higher Education
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