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THE BANDWIDTH
BANDWAGON
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Students Push for Wireless Campus Connection
By Asa Pittman
in the days of early man, tribal elders instructed a community’s youth. Later, books enlightened eager pupils. Today, the Internet, accessed via computer, is a student’s research resource of choice. Many college campuses, however, have discovered the next generation of teaching tools: the wireless network. This new species of technology offers the collaboration of the community, the mobility of the textbook and the timesaving know-how of the computer processor. Many of the area’s universities, including, Washington University, Saint Louis University, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, have already introduced the wireless network to their educational repertoire, in a bid to attract students and to keep their campuses ahead of the technological curve.
At many local halls of higher education, the wireless boom is a recent phenomenon, adopted on a campus-wide level only within the past five years. Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville had just begun to dabble in wireless networks eight years ago, when Jay Starratt, the school’s Associate Vice Chancellor of Information Technology, first assumed his post. “We needed Internet access while we were building in East
St. Louis,” he says, “but the new site didn’t have any wiring yet.” A wireless network wasn’t developed on SIUE’s main campus until 2002, the same year the University of Missouri-St. Louis introduced Wi-Fi, or wireless networks, to its students. Saint Louis University joined the bandwidth bandwagon a year later. By that time, Washington University co-eds, users of the technology since 2001, were wireless veterans in comparison to their counterparts at other area schools.
Information technology administrators on local campuses’ gave the same reason for their institution’s delayed adoption of wireless technology: no one asked for it. Wired networks provided campuses with inexpensive, reliable, secure connectivity, whereas wireless networks were pricey, unpredictable, and prone to security breeches. The decline in the price of wireless cards and advances in wireless security, however, fueled a wireless craze. Those with wireless capability wanted to use it—at home, at work, and at school.
“[Computer network] users, especially the students, more than anything pushed it,” says Michael Moore, Saint Louis University network architect, of his university’s development of wireless networks. Steve Wiese, director of systems and operations at Washington University offered a similar explanation for the wireless network construction at his university: “The students asked for the wireless network, then the student senate passed a resolution approving its adoption on campus.” Dr. Jim Tom and Amy Imming, Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology at the University of Missouri-
St. Louis and Director of Voice and Data Communications at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville respectively, also described their schools’ adoption of wireless networks as having taken place under student-driven, supply-and-demand scenarios.
Thanks to student intervention, today, universities with wireless networks are commonplace. “You don’t need much to become wireless ready,” says Starratt. At many schools, a campus computer account, an electronic device with a network compatible wireless card, and an access point are all a potential user needs to connect wirelessly. Like a student identification card, a campus computer account is standard issue at most universities, and limits access to school resources to campus members only. The student, faculty, or staff member with the account is assigned a log-in name and a password, which enable the campus computer account holder to connect to the school’s secured wireless network, also known as the virtual private network, or VPN.
Even VPNs, however, can be hacked into, warns Tom. Recognizing the susceptibility of wireless connections to outside tampering, Dr. Tom installed an extra security measure to ensure that if UMSL’s wireless network were compromised, its wired network would remain hacker-free. “We try to make the [wireless] network secure,” says Dr. Tom, “in addition to the mandatory log-in, we electronically segregated the wireless network from the main [wired] network.”
 UMSL student Kayvan Lavasani enjoying the flexibility of wireless access on campus. |
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Though an impenetrable wireless network may be difficult to come by, wireless-ready electronics on college campuses are not. Most new laptop computers have built-in wireless cards, Starratt says. Wireless-ready Personal Digital Assistants, also known as PDAs, are also popular among co-eds, Moore says. To encourage wireless network use on its campus, SIUE administrators issued wireless-ready laptops to each member of its college of pharmacy’s inaugural class. Patrons of SIUE’s Lovejoy Library can rent wireless laptops at the circulation desk. “The system is definitely very popular,” Starratt—who, in addition to being SIUE’s IT head, is also dean of the Lovejoy Library—says of the laptop rental arrangement: two hours with the laptop in exchange for the patron’s library card.
Wireless-ready laptops and PDAs, however, only work in the presence of a wireless signal. Providing an adequate number of access points, or stations from which the wireless radio signal may be transmitted, is a challenge for many universities. Three hundred eighteen access points in 12 buildings give approximately half of the Saint Louis University campus members wireless access estimated Moore. About a hundred access points provide wireless service to an estimated 130 wireless users at Washington University, Wiese says. Fifty-eight access points impart, “almost every building has some coverage” on the UMSL campus Tom says. He stipulated, however, that when designing a wireless network, the placement of access points, not access point quantity, is the best indicator of coverage. At the UMSL campus, Tom says, wireless service is available where it is most needed—in the school’s high traffic areas: meeting rooms, conference rooms, lecture halls, the student center and in student lounges. Imming expressed confidence that 49 access points were sufficient, at least in the near future, to meet the needs of the SIUE campus: “Anybody who uses wireless [at SIUE] finds it.”
Through the wireless network, students, faculty, and staff are connected to the web and their school’s digital databases. No institution interviewed was without a web-based data management service that allowed students to access their email accounts, download transcripts, submit assignments, and monitor their current class grades, and execute registrar functions, such as course enrollment and withdrawal, via the web. Faculty and staff at area universities can check their email through the service too, as well as record grades, create syllabi, and in some cases, teach courses online.
Blackboard is the management system behind SIUE’s online resources, says Starratt. In addition to email account maintenance, he says, the educational software makes possible online discussion boards, virtual classrooms, and file exchange. My Gateway, UMSL’s data management software based on the Blackboard Learning System, provides similar services as Blackboard, but for file exchange, students and faculty use a system known as Samba or Steamboat. “It’s like a giant disk drive in the sky,” says Tom of the dual-named virtual filing system. For real-time, online audio and video conferencing, UMSL campus members use a program called Centra. At Washington University, two systems, WebSTAC and WebFAC, manage students’ information and other campus data. Saint Louis University once used multiple systems as well, until the spring semester of 2005, says Moore, when the multi-system service was replaced by one program, Banner. Regardless of what a university’s virtual resources are or how they are managed, a campus’ wireless network should provide access to same services as the campus’ wired network, says Tom: “At UMSL there’s no difference between networks, and that’s
the point.”
Each university’s IT department reported plans to expand its campus’ wireless coverage in response to a growing demand for the service. The sources stipulated, however, that the scope of the expansion plans would depend upon funding. “It’s growing by leaps and bounds,” Wiese says of Washington University’s wireless network. He expected more access points to be installed on the university throughout the year, as departments’ requests for service access came in. During 2005, his first year as a Saint Louis University network architect, Moore helped make SLU’s medical and nursing schools wireless ready. He predicted the dental school would have wireless access in 2006, with more sites to come: “we’re constantly adding new buildings to the network.” Imming plans to more than triple the number of access points at SIUE, increasing the campus’ wireless coverage from 75 to 90 percent by the spring of 2006. By depending on her staff of ten for all survey, design, and installation, Imming keeps overhead low and efficiency high. “Since we do it all ourselves, it’s cheaper,” she says. Imming estimated that each access point cost the state-funded university $1,000 for equipment only. At UMSL, a public university like SIUE, funding for wireless is also a concern. The school’s existing 58 access points cost UMSL “approximately $50,000 on hard costs,” says Tom, which excludes installation, configuration, and maintenance expenses. UMSL chooses its wireless services carefully, he says, a precaution against over-investing in technology that will become obsolete or incompatible within a few years.
As wireless network access becomes a convenience that campus communities come to expect, universities public and private will have to consider wireless expenses in their budgets in order to stay competitive, says Wiese. “At first we’d get positive feedback about the wireless network all the time. People would say ‘this is great, this is wonderful.’ Now, people take it for granted,” he says, “It’s just become a part of their daily lives.” |
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