College goes wireless

March 30, 2006

This month, the college completes the installation of wireless communications components that will allow students, faculty and staff to connect to the Internet from anywhere on campus, indoors or outdoors.
Students with a PIN number can now log on remotely to access class schedule information, grades, campus calendars and registration information without being tethered to a telephone or data line. With the new wireless system, they now have the mobility to go anywhere on campus to do research, homework, even lab assignments.
The system consists of a wireless infrastructure that transmits radio signals to carry data and other information. An array of 60 transmitters called access points blanket the campus with overlapping signals, much as sprinkler heads overlap a lawn to ensure complete water coverage. Each access point, which is roughly the size and shape of a typical desk telephone, transmits information from a central management server through connections with other smaller servers to provide unbroken communication link to users anytime they are on campus. Access points each cost about $200. The college spent nearly $200,000 on hardware, software, and licensing to complete the wireless project.
Although wireless is not by any means a new technology, it is now an important and growing extension of the college’s LAN, or wired network. Students and faculty have long sought to have wireless capabilities while on campus, but without the infrastructure to support it, the college had to wait some time before initiating the program.
According to Tran Hong, director Technology Services, the college has now laid the foundation for a growing wireless world.
“Information Technology will have a far-reaching and legitimate impact on our students and faculty well into the future. The great thing about wireless is its limitless ability to expand into new applications as they become available, and its cost is relatively small when you consider the long-term benefits,” he said.
Benefits such as wireless inventory tracking. Now, instead of a costly annual inventory process, college property can inventoried anytime and in minutes using a computer and an electronic legend of the campus. The system allows for real-time monitoring of expensive computers, copiers, cameras and other equipment that each are fitted with a small electronic marker. With this, the labor-intensive days of doing inventory by hand, moving from office to office with a clipboard, is a thing of the past. The marker contains the item’s serial number and the location to which it is assigned; should a computer, for instance, be taken to a new office, technicians can actually watch its progress as it moves down the hall.
Hong notes that the new system’s inherent benefits include saving money on payroll expenses and prevents theft.
Other advantages of the wireless technology on campus include wireless telephones, which enable users to check their voicemail from anyplace on campus; increased campus security, with video surveillance from any computer and wireless access readers for electronic door entry; and instant communication with the college’s computer, communications, HVAC, electrical, and irrigation systems.
Added Hong: “We are staying true to our mission to stay at the forefront of technology. Today we have a secure wireless network that will provide access to information for our students and for the college as a whole, as part of our continued technology build out. It’s a great use of taxpayer dollars.”
Part of the build out includes the communications infrastructure for several large buildings—the new $33 million Performing Arts Center and Theater will be completed in 2007—that will be wireless ready when all the buildings in the current plan are expected to be finished in 2010.