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One Glimpse Of The Wireless Future
SemiBarbaricPrincess writes "Check out this story at wired.com about wireless networks on college campuses. The focus is on Dartmouth College." It would be great to see this kind of wireless community outside academia too.
I'd like to see it at my university as well.
Plenty of other schools [Bucknell, Penn State, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, U of Florida, ...] have had this stuff for a long time now.
Yes, the article's interesting if you're into networking and/or wireless data transmission, but their explicit focus on Dartmouth makes it seem as though they're unique and trendsetting. It's quite the contrary, however, as Dartmouth was in no way one of the first handful of schools to deploy 802.11b.
Kudos to Wired! for running a contemporary article that talks a lot about the current state of wireless/laptop/learning at top colleges, but I feel that could have at least given credit to other schools that were at least equally as deserving.
Thanks for listening.
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Going wireless takes on huge security issues. How is Dartmouth going to deal with tightening down security? I know of people that drove down through a city with a laptop and pringles cans and picked up alot of wireless networks (including a state lottery wireless network). So that would be the biggest concern for me.
I would rather be wired and go gigabyte than go wireless and be stuck at speeds less than 100 megabytes. Wireless is nice, but it is also more expensive than staying wired.
Ahhh.. now I can download mp3's, leech off Kazaa, and listen to online radio while sitting in some boring lecture.. this is the life! :-)
Take off every 'sig'!
All your 'sig' are belong to us!
They forgot the good old University of Texas at Austin on the list.
Sooner or later, it's going to hit its saturation point. Just like with any other network.
The only problem with 802.11b is that you only have a relatively small range to work within. It doesn't take much to have so much traffic in the 2.4 GHz band that smaller wireless devices become useless in anything but Ad-Hoc mode. The future may not so much be in providing wireless technology as Dartmouth suggests, but in developing technologies that control the manner in which these devices communicate (e.g. some way to tell a client to use a different channel, switching, trunking, etc.)
Ich liefere Ihnen Licht und Kraft
Und ermögliche es Ihnen Sprache, Musik und Bild
Durch den Äther auszusenden und zu empfangen
Ich bin Ihr Diener und Ihr Herr zugleich
Deshalb hütet mich gut..
Mich, den Genius der Energie.
Bowie J. Poag
It would be nice to see this *in* academia, too. The main thing holding it up (insofar it is currently held up) is price, which is certainly something students are concerned with.
While I obviously expect that it will get a bit cheaper, are there any companies out there that truly do focus on 'same bang, less buck', or are they all just trying to up both these factors at the same time?
Speaking from a student's standpoint, obviously.
My experience is that a generic 802.11 solution out of the box for a generic user drops more packets than a large-twisted-bitten-cornered UTP cable. ;D )
If you want good perfomance you have to mess with antenae, wires, pringles-eating and that sort of things... (I will not talk about security and war drivers, just in case
------- The last Sig. got fired.
No.
But hey, it's wireless so it must be the bee's knees.
Here at University of Maryland at College Park, the Office of Information Technology has been pretty quick in rolling out 802.11b throughout campus. We're not at the magical 100% coverage point, but you can walk into most any building and find a spot with coverage. The entire outdoor mall is wireless, too - laying out on the grass on a sunny day while coding a CS project and doing some IM on your laptop is really nice :-).
I think that technology like this could be astoudingly useful in the classroom, and it saddens me a bit that we haven't really made any serious attempts to integrate it... money I suppose. Zapping notes and due dates into PDAs would be nice, at the minimum - cuts down on communication errors.
I predict we'll see serious usage of these technologies in 10 years - gotta give traditional educators some time to cope with them.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Im in the "Wireless Pilot Program" at the college of engineering at nc state and we dont have nearly this much coverage, just some of the buildings have partial coverage, and the only outdoor coverage I know of is at "The brickyard" which is traditionally the most trafficicked spot on campus. I think the library has full wireless coverage as well.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
The page is not widened, it is longened.
I prefer the term embiggened.
Me fail English? That's unpossible.
You're getting a Dell!v en_home.htm
http://www.dell.com/us/en/dhs/topics/segtopic_ste
Here at UC Berekeley they've been running a pilot program called AirBears. Basically they outfitted a few facilities (library, some cafes, etc) with 802.11b access points. Because it's a pilot program, it wasn't publicly advertised. People who are using wireless do so because they heard about it through word of mouth from other users. They're running software to track access leves at the various points around the campus, and it seems the number of users is in the mere dozens (although its increasing). And those few users account for a lot of traffic. I can only imagine what would happen if hundreds of people started using the same access points. The system would probably break down and become unusuable. Has anyone here experienced a densely used WiFi network?
Wireless networks are widely used outside of acadamia. I don't understand why you think they're not. Cruising around any metro city you're likely to fine numerous wireless accesspoints.
scott
and it's a pretty nice place.
Wireless security is still sorely lacking, however -- then again, most don't seem to care. Coverage is quite good, allowing people to lounge on the Green (a giant square of grassland that's a holdover from 'the commons' of early America) sans wires.
Blitz is unique in that it's an IM program crossed with IMAP: email at IM speeds, stored all server-side, with instant access from anywhere, all interfaced with the MX server. (we apparently run a hacked up and badly mutilated version of sendmail to get it to tie into Blitz).
The bit about phones is true: it's not used. There are ubiquitous public Blitz terminals everywhere, so even though of us running hulking giant desktop towers aren't left out. It's sufficiently integrated into the culture that profs often send announcements/homework via blitz, and will answer brief content-related questions that way as well.
Even for the wired folks, I should point out that jacks are ubiquitous.
All in all, wireless is cool here because it's _not_ an ohh-ah phenomenon: people walking around with wireless cards *expect* to stay connected, period. (the whole "sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic" bit).
Last note: the blitz server is under pseudo-BSD style licensing. I'm trying to get a few details clarified, however. As of right now, no open-source clients are available.
This is a great example of how pervasive, open wireless hotspots can empower individual communication in unexpected ways.
.
It will not be long before this kind of saturation is common in all the metropolitan areas (previous studies have placed wireless growth at double the current deployment by 2005)
The biggest potential uses and applications are centered around peer network integration that support the style of personal, interactive communication people crave.
There are a few projects working towards this goal like the Janus Wireless Project . This will provide not just increased internet access reliability and throughput (using multiple AP's and simultaneous associations) but also tight integration with common peer network services, like file sharing, music broadcasting using a broadcast FEC transport and playlists, even Voice over IP.
This kind of infrastructure has to be built by philantropist coders, as the business model is lacking, however, this makes it all the more tuned to what users will want, and the resulting networks in full control of those who generously provide the hardware and network connectivity (such as the Personal Telco Project
I can only begin to imagine the possible applications of a robust, open wireless network coupled with integrated peer network services and good internet connectivity. This will be one of the most interesting and innovative areas of growth in the near future.
At my school we have full wireless coverage. Granted, it's a residential school. Are there any other high schools, residential or not, that have wireless networks on campus?
I have read a few articles on the new specs and it appears there always will be away to hack into wireless networks. They look promising for speed and less interference with 2.4Gig (802.11a that is.)
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Actually, there's an underlying trend here.
Wireless is pretty useless if you have a desktop machine. Ever since we got the wireless network here at CMU, the percentage of students with laptops has increased steadily. That and it's very convienent to do assignments when every one has their laptop with them.
Also, we just built a new wing to one of our building. In each seat in the classrooms, they put an ethernet port. I've never seen anyone use them, since wireless is so pervasive.
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psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
They're right about nobody knowing how this revolution will come about.
Read page 2: Female initiating sex, now that's revolutionary!
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I'm a student at Drexel University trying to get a Computer Science Degree. When I started in the Fall of 2000, they were praising themselves as being the first (and possibly only, at that time[?]) University in the world to have a wireless network accessible from anywhere on the campus, which spans several city blocks. This includes the educational buildings, which are mostly centralized, and the dorms, which are spread out over a few blocks.
Sadly, though, they got smart about a year ago and started registering the MAC Adresses of the wireless that are permitted to access the network. As a student, I am more than welcome to use the network, all I have to do is register with the right people. But all of the residents in the area that were popping in on it, plus any guests you might bring to campus, they're all locked out now.
Am I Over-Moderating??
The Electro-Acoustic Program merges CS, EE, and music composition into a program that is perhaps the best of its kind in the world.
Longened is a perfectly cromulent word.
and all I have to say is:
AAGGHHHHHH my eyes, they burn!!!
I can't wait for a day when I can walk down the street, and have every business within 1 mile try and push advertising onto my devices.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...from my Stats classroom, about 15 minutes before class starts, on my laptop, via the University of Akron's wireless connection.
;)
I used to think this kind of stuff didn't matter. You use it once, and then after that, you wonder how you ever lived without it. No worrying about transferring files from lab computers back to my home computer, no worrying about missing messages, the ability to actually be productive during time when I'd normally just be waiting for stuff...
It's an incredible thing. What else can you call an innovation that lets a person read Slashdot at any time, from anywhere on campus?
Security concerns over 802.11b usually resolve around people plugging access points directly into a corporate network. That's not the case here. Think of the wireless cloud like the public internet. I see three security issues, two of which are easily addressed.
1) security of the end users machine. Most of us would shudder at the though of connecting a desktop windows box directly to the internet. Since the average student is only online for 16 minutes at a time, there's enough of a moving target to make this easily as secure as 85% of dialup usage.
2) privacy of the data. There is none. Neither is there once your packets leave your wired ISP. Deal with it, or use GPG.
3) abuse of the network. Drive-by spammers, kiddie-porn downloaders, and so on. MAC addresses can be snooped and reused. Possibly the triangulation tools they were talking about can help you prove that it wasn't you downloading live goat porn in the lecture hall in the middle of Prof. X's lecture, even if it was going to your MAC address.
--
E_NOSIG
We have a few hundred AP's on campus at UF, that cover a fairly large piece of a very large campus. The coverage map (mostly accurate) is online, as well as instructions on connecting.
The nice thing about the network here is that no mac registration is necessary. The wireless network is seperated from campus by filters that can only be broken through via VPN connection to the campus VPN server, or authenticated with their campus 'gatorlink' login. When we first developed the system, no commercial products existed to do what we needed (though today there are many); any web traffic is automatically redirected to the authentication server that allows the users to login with their campus login, and their mac is added to the auth table after a successful login. This makes the service easy to use, transparent, and compatible with just about every platform you can think of. Of course, no encryption by default if people choose to take that route, but that's why we offer the VPN as well.
This is very old news. If you didnt already
know that Dartmuth is one of the best
wire(d)less campus in the United States Of
Amerika.
Yesterday (in fact) I realized that there was wireless coverage in my politics class at Rochester Institute of Technology. They have been rolling it out in common areas (library, study lounges, etc) for the past year and it's finally starting to spill over into classroom space. We were discussing a court decision in class and I went and pulled up the full opinion on my laptop in seconds. He mentioned something and I was reading things about it while listening.
Of course, it can be distracting when you aren't paying attention in CS class and you are talking on AIM and checking your e-mail.
-Shaun
And don't get me started on network uptime there. Outages are a regular occurrence; usually 5-10/week in my experience. These last from 1/2hr to several hours. No big deal, right? It's a big deal when you have work that needs to get done; the more research that is done online, the more significant a network outage is. Kids are moving towards online research in droves....do the math.
Back to the $750k outlay for wireless access points....the school is so damn cheap that they claim they can't afford to open the most popular dining hall on campus more than a few hours a day (it's "Home Plate", the one with the highest prices!). As it is, a decent meal still costs ~$10. That's pretty steep, considering that tuition is well over $30k/year, and your meal plan is not included in room + board.
Tuition doesn't even have to be that high. In fact, the previous president raised tuition at one point because he "didn't want Dartmouth to be the least-expensive school in the Ivy League" (his words, not mine).
And now lets rant about Dave Kotz, whom the article makes out to be some sort of savior. I had Dave Kotz; he was terrible. He doesn't know which end is up, and often falls asleep in his own classes. Let me tell you, it's hard to learn when the professor is ASLEEP.
This isn't to say I hate Dartmouth - going there was the best decision I've made in my life so far - but the people running it have some fucked-up priorities.
Random blabbing! Exactly the point ... are there really that many folks worth listening to? On or off campus? Unless you're a dame, the answer is of course not no, but hellno.
Or is a story on wireless networks run by Wired magazine just a bad idea to begin with?
One of the first to do this was Buena Vista University (a private school in Iowa... check out MyWirelessCampus.com).
Under Buena Vista's model, every student and faculty member receives a Gateway Solo laptop with a wireless network card with the laptops being swapped out for new ones every few years.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - E.W. Dijkstra
please tell me strada is one of those cafes... I have been even thinking about using one of the open networks around there, but the (il) legality of that has made me hesitate till now. And also, if yes, how does one get onto these networks ?
A.
The University of Rochester now has wireless in the library, the academic quad, and the commons building. Anyone can connect to the access points but you have to log in (via an HTML page) to the URNET with a userid/password. Very nice system.
:-p
On a semi-related note, I set up a linksys AP in my room... one of my suitemates discovered he can now get connectivity on the toilet. Oh, the places we'll go!
My wireless card can't pick it up in our lounge (20 feet away), but for some odd reason I could get it across campus (half mile, and no LOS that I could see) - anyone know what the hell is going on there?
Yes. That's cool.
But the Educational implications are way underrated. If there is homework, and you do it on your laptop and it's multichoice, the Teacher could look at the Homework due this week, see what's not understood, and help the Students understand this in the lesson.
The ordinary feedback is way slow (student brings homework, attends lesson, teacher can apply his knowledge only one week later. So, until you really know something it takes up to 3 weeks!)
If the Feedback loop can be shortened with technology, that'd be way cool, and this wireless technology puts the required infrastructure in place.
Now we just need open source tools, maybe like liblearn.
get 7 free Japanese lessons.
Wireless network is far less radical than networking itself and even that didn't change the fundamental teacher-student nature of universities. Get over yourself.
It would be great to see this kind of wireless community outside academia too.
Then set one up. No one is stopping you.
Back in my college days, I was an alpha-geek because I could actually do programming work on our VAX systems from my dorm room. No wireless or ethernet, my computer (IBM XT-compatible, 10 MB hard disk) had a 1200 baud modem (that 1.2 kbps for you young-ins who only know of 56 kbps modems).
Now, of course, I surf from my porch swing via my wireless network in my house connected to my cable modem.
___
Cognitive Overflow
more than yo
Also, I recently setup a wireless router at home, and got an 802.11b card for my laptop. Now I can browse the internet on the couch in front of the tv, posting dumb comments to /. threads ;)
Yes strada is wired :-)!
Getting onto it is really simple:
1) Get an 802.11b pcmcia wireless card
2) Through your card's software, set the
SSID of the network to AirBears
3) Turn encryption off
4) Surf!
You can also get AirBears in Evans, around Memorial Field, everywhere in Doe and Moffit, and
around HAAS.
Go here for more information:
http://airbears.berkeley.edu
While not exactly at the front of the pack on wireless, Dartmouth has had a number of interesting contributions to the field:
- DCTS/DTSS: Dartmouth developed an early timesharing system in the late 60's
- BASIC: Kemeney & Kurtz, a pair of professors, wrote Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code in 1964. It's easy to dismiss BASIC, but a lot of people got their start with it.
- Synclavier: Jon Appelton, currently the head of Dartmouth's electroacoustic music program, developed this digital synth in '78 at New England Digital. It was widely used through the 90's.
- Networked Campus: Dartmouth adopted a "port for every pillow" philosophy in 1984 and wired the whole campus with appletalk. They got a lot of mileage out of that network.
- Required computers: Dartmouth has mandated computer ownership for all students since (i think) the class of '91. Having it mandatory means students can get financial aid for their computers, if necessary
- blitzmail: dartmouth wrote an email program in '84 (?). nothing amazing or groundbreaking, but the the widespread adoption of "blitz" in combination with the mandatory computers and ubiquitous networking had a huge effect on the campus social scene, and did a lot to bring dartmouth grads into the information age.
I'm sure there's more i'm missing here... anyone?
circa75.com
I live in Hanover, NH (the home of Dartmouth College) and discovered their extensive wireless network about a year and a half ago. It is truly an impressive piece of work. There is a "green" of about two acres in the middle of town that is blanketed with 802.11, but that's not so exciting as the fact that almost anywhere in downtown Hanover an ambitious surfer can lock on to Dartmouth's connection. Eating a sandwich in out local Subway, I surf the web. Driving through town, I check my e-mail and cache Slashdot.
The network is comprised of a vast number of Cisco Aironet access points with high-gain antennas. One can roam seamlessly on it, and the signal is consistently strong. There are, in fact, so many access points that one can pinpoint a computer's location on campus by getting latency from its MAC to three access points.
The only problem is: the wireless network doesn't broadcast its name, so you have to know it or find it out. And I"m not going to tell you.
--Bennett Prescott
Former Lord Of Packets
Oh yes one more thing: to get onto the network
you need to have a current SID and an infobears
password.
When you configure your card, open up your
web browser. Regardless of what your home page is,
you will be redirected to the authentication page. Type in your SID/Password there. After it goes through, you can browse, ftp, ssh, email, etc.
Roaming (and automatic handoffs) are one of the features that sets Cisco/Symbol/high-end Orinoco APs apart from many cheaper ones (Note: Such features are quickly drifting downwards to lower-priced units, I believe some Linksys APs now support roaming too).
Hopping from cell to cell (AP to AP) is the key to cellular phone systems having such high capacity. Need more capacity? Can't afford more spectrum? Drop your power level down and pack the cells more closely together.
If Dartmouth has 460 APs, that means that they are running at relatively low power levels, i.e. their network is quite segmented to distribute the load.
Still, some APs (like those in cafeterias) could be a little overloaded.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I go to BYU and we already have wireless. No dreaming about it here.
thanks a bunch... I checked up the airbears site after posting that, and it doesn't list strada, so I was not planning to check it out, but now i will.
A.
A lot of corporations frown upon 802.11 due to its security isses.
Small corporations, not as much (due to ignorance). Large corps, majorly different story, even thought they could potentially benefit from it more.
That said, the article doesn't just talk about Dartmouth's coverage, it talks about how much 802.11 has been integrated into Dartmouth lifestyle.
I went to Cornell, by no means a backwards school. But laptops were few and far between and Red Rover (Cornell's network) sucks coverage-wise. It's also far more closed than Dartmouth's network.
The writer mentions that it took a day or two of being present at Dartmouth before he saw someone using a cell phone - That shows just how much impact cell phones are having on life at Dartmouth. At Cornell, if you go for more than an hour or two without seeing someone yakking on a cell phone, it's impressive. It's especially true for the younger incoming classes (those who were sophomores when I was a senior, for example) - My upstairs neighbors were all sophomores, and to picture them NOT being attached to their cell phones is unimaginable.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Wireless networks are nice espically at Vanderbilt University. Though the theoretical bandwidth is less, in pratice wireless is faster and has less congestion than the wired networks. On top of that you can request for a new ip after you fill up the 1gig download limit (512meg up). From what I understand our setup is just like Dartmouth with similar cisco routers and access points in many of the buildings.
In the article about Dartmouth they note that Dartmouth's network is intentionally left wide open, in the true spirit of academia.
Harvard could likely be intentionally wide open, or they could be like Cornell's Red Rover service. You can associate, you can get an IP, but good luck getting your packets routed beyond the gateway unless your MAC is registered.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
In my GF's school they have 802.11b in the common areas/lounges/study rooms of buildings but not in the classrooms. I wonder how they do this.. Is it just judicious placement of access points, or is there some sort of shielding you can put in the walls to block the signal out of the classrooms?
... this quote:
;)
"Each homecoming night since 1920, members of the freshman class have built a towering bonfire at the center of the green, running a lap around the pyre for every year of their graduating class (the class of 1999 did 99 laps; not to be outdone, the class of 2000 did 100)."
Nice, they're POSIX compliant since 1920..
Chicago's DePaul University has had one for about a year. Here's the info page. Their only security seems to be that you need a username and password to download their 128-bit WEP key. But there are some areas that do not have any security.
> get tea
No Tea: dropped.
Stevens Institute of Technology has had wireless for three years; all the students have laptops, this year's freshman model has built in wireless (the upperclassmen use pcmcia cards).
Stevens also wired all its dorms back in 1987, and has had a pc requirement since 1983.
I know. The problem with Stevens is that when they have something good for PR, they don't know how to flaunt it in the right places.
Dartmouth probably invited wired.com to show off their involvement with wireless, while everyone else in the campus networking business didn't think it to be news and didn't bother.
Wrt Stevens, I was impressed with their initial planning and efforts into TreeNet on campus but didn't have the opportunity to take advantage of it (graduated prior to implementation). Also, when I first enrolled, none of my high school classmates had ever heard of the school although many professionals I spoke to did. It helps to advertise to the general public/business to build better recognition.
This is not my sig.
There's an interesting use of 802.11b technology at Vocera. It's a small device you can hang on your shirt like a Star-Trek communicator that uses wireless network infrastructure and voice recognitioh.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Why? The phone man just left here after giving me the bad news that my new 7100/768 DSL circuit will never run over 5000. Why? Crosstalk in the cable pairs. Poor pair management. Wireless will eventually take over....networks using cables for the 'last mile' are beginning to degrade. Wireless will continue to improve. Once they cross..and they will..wireless will never look back.
According to this article it seems like the only thing that these networks are good for are booty calls and spying on sorority house traffic.
I wish he had just kept to the topic and not tried to sensationalize it. The topic and ideas are good but it is not a very well written article.
I currently work for the University of Akron (http://www.uakron.edu) where we do have a wireless network on campus. I must say, the future is nice, but scarey! Yes, it is sweet being able to give presentations with a laptop using the 'net without having to find a network jack, but there are BIG draw backs as well. It is also cool (and a great use of time) to take a a laptop to meetings and read my email during portions of meetings that don't concern me without offending anyone at the meeting or to review my meeting notes (and take notes) without taking a pen to the meeting! However (now the bad news), anyone can pick up anything I type trough the laptop thgat is sent across the wireless net .... no encryption. Although the wireless net is nice, it isn't well protected. Security is something that most academic institutions seem to forget (damn academic freedon issues!) when using newer technologies. But ..., I do believe that your mac address has to be on record before you can connect to the campus net ... (I don't have any of my own wireless devices to try this with ... the shame!), which does help with security and network abuse ... a LITTLE ....
... but couldn't the future be great?!?!?! NO MORE CABLES!!!
... what fun that will be!!! Hopefully informing the world about the credit card theft incident at the "outdoor" Best Buy will help convince people to secure their wireless nets a bit better .... but so far, people just don't seem to care enough (or maybe I'm just surrounded by too many people that have no idea what security is or that just don't care enough ... that is, until their credit card number *or bosses credit card number* gets swiped by some hacker in a van)
I also worked for a small ISP in a small city south of Akron, Ohio. They have very little competition in the ISP market (no DSL or Cable Modem service available), but they did provide wireless access to all the businesses in the area. That was COOL! Being able to take an IPac outside (anywhere in the "city") and having instant access to the Internet was pretty sweet. It would be nice if other places near me had this available. I heard something about providing schools with newer wireless access points that have a range of 20+ miles and adding bandwidth fees to everyone's taxes, but I have a feeling that is WAY down the road
Of course, the only problem now is security. The world is going to have to learn about IPsec, etc
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Occidental College lets anyone with a wireless ethernet card fly on to the wireless network. Makes me want to move acros the street!
According to pages 2-3 of the article, the prof is actively "teaching two courses on the psychology of learning". Then I read that the class is limited to multiple choice participation. I mean, that's nice and simple but most of the best courses I took (learned/retained a LOT) involved open discussion.
Seems like that's a tough subject to teach, but to rely on multiple choice slides is to feed the answers and therefore limit the grasp and boundaries of learning. In this case, it seems that the students are learning to expect an answer, in some form.
I would think that the best method to teach a course like this would be to vary the teaching techniques throughout the semester. Learning about learning would have the added benefit from teaching by example. Of course, this is inherently a real pain to administer.
This is not my sig.
I have started grad school in at New Jersey Institute of Technology, and coming from an undergrad, having had wireless, I was pleasantly suprised to find out that NJIT has implemented wireless access points in major areas as of last school year. I got a wireless on me laptop, sat on the dry newark grass and worked on my papers here henceforth, weather permitting. It's been about 6 months since I started doing this and so far, I'm the only one I've seen using it. As it is a public university in Newark, NJ, I can sort of understand the deterrent in carrying/affording laptops around campus. So I have to question the administrations use of funds. I do love it and don't want to bear the thought of losing wireless, but maybe the attempt to be on the forefront of technology may be too early for some schools. OR i'll continue using it, start a trend and the students will finally catch on.
I'm waiting to see how many cancer cases will result
because of wi-fi. Only now are the lawsuits really
starting to hit from the cell-phones of the early
1990's. Ten years from now, we'll probably see
similar lawsuits for wireless.
The sisters of Epsilon Kappa Theta are definitely up to something. The wireless cards in the sorority house's computers each move an average of 222 Mbytes of data per day -- only one other spot on campus, an administrative building, moves more than 150 Mbytes a day per card. An MP3 server, perhaps?
:P
Hmm I dunno maybe http://www.EPTgirlcams.xxx ? Try not to make it too obvious!
It made a huge impact on the usefulness of the computer equipment; probably the biggest immediate change was nearly eliminating paper from meetings.
I set up a wireless net at home pretty much concurrent with the work rollout; it changed the way I used computers at home, too. One of the first things I did with it was get play-by-play of a Red Sox game while my wife watched the Mets on TV, but it didn't take long before IMDB overwhelmed Maltin's too.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
I recently graduated from St. Joseph's College, a tiny liberal arts school in Rensselear, IN, where the chair of our CS department is very active in developing wireless technology as a viable solution to running wires all over campus/the barren countryside. For the last year and a half students have been experimenting with the wireless technology and testing it in an attempt to make it viable for use in the dorms and other areas around campus. Last semester there was a class solely dedicated to wireless networking where students setup the wireless network using the latest greatest secure protocols in addition to a variety of hardware to build a robust wireless network spanning the campus and reaching into the small town of Rensselaer. Academia has made some great strides in the last two or three years regarding wireless technology, hopefully it will be available more readily in the public sector soon...I'd like to not have to have cable, or a phone line, or a T1 and be able to get broadband at my apartment.
Memories become legend, Legend fades to myth, and even myth is forgotten by the time that age comes again.-Robert Jordan
they forgot to mention bucknell, that's why krout is Bitching.
I doubt the cafe, the bison, the library and the engineering building count as a wiredless campus.
Die Karma!
Hofsta "University" (quotations are used to emphasize the opinion that Hofstra is more like a secondary high school rather than a University), has a wireless network. I have some friends who attend law school there and they are able to surf the Net during class. Thats horrible... I think a school should take the necessary precautions to eliminate the ability to do that. On second thought, shouldn't "college" students be responsible enough to realize that they should be learning during class? But then again, who ever accused college students as being "responsible"?
Just a rant....
100% Insightful
I work at the University of Kentucky and while the article does list other Universities, I'd like to add that we too have a very complete wireless network. Since we are a state institution, we also have an open, public wireless system. Anyone can drive up to campus and surf the web. Don't be foolish in thinking that we are't secure, the wireless network is quite seperate from the rest of the network on campus. In fact, you do have to authenticate to get to specific campus web servers, use proxies to access parts of the library, etc.
UT of Arlington has wireless acess inside the CSE building. It's great for when you want to cerf the web while listening to your professor drone on about compression this and compiler that.
We've had intermittent, private networks in selected buildings for a few years, but they really kicked off this summer and started doing the whole campus. The estimated time to completion is june of '03. The only problem is that the client they have chosen to prevent leeches has poor support for OS X. It seems that Cisco has a beta that works well, but it ain't public. The areas that don't require the client are great though.
Okay, so what exactly are those sorority chicks doing with all of that bandwidth? Hmmm...naked sorority chicks on the web?? Anybody hack their network yet?
My son goes to UT Dallas and has already adapted to wireless, pervasive computing. He leaves his laptop on while he moves around and has a new message to reflect his status. His new AIM away message is "brb, between buildings".
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi
CLEARLY these EKT girls are running a porn cam site from their sorority house...
The sisters of Epsilon Kappa Theta are definitely up to something. The wireless cards in the sorority house's computers each move an average of 222 Mbytes of data per day -- only one other spot on campus, an administrative building, moves more than 150 Mbytes a day per card. An MP3 server, perhaps? Maybe they're watching streamed video on a big-screen TV -- or using high-bandwidth Internet radio to supply the music for all-night parties. They could be trying to corner the market on Diesel jeans via sorority eshopping excursions, or running a molecular modeling program for a pharmaceutical company. We may never know for sure. Since the college has a strict policy against monitoring student computer use unless investigating complaints, university officials couldn't tell me what's going on. The sisters of EKT did not respond to my prying emails. So for now, their secret remains safe.
The sisters of Epsilon Kappa Theta are definitely up to something, moving an average of 1.3 Gbytes a day.
E V E R Y T H I N G I W R I T E I S F A L S E
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I go to Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, and there is wireless everywhere (as well as liberal spatterings of 100TX RJ45 jacks) Every student is issued a laptop (the freshmen class, of which i am a member, gets ThinkPad T30s) The article is quite right about the lack of cell phone usage, most people just IM each other. The proffessors are also very technologically in tune. The math homework is submitted online and graded immediately. Computer science homework is also submitted online, as well as writing and humanites homework. I haven't been here long enough to know if this trend continues. We have Blackboard 5 system that provides access to course information (syllabus, homeworks, etc.) In fact my English teacher is using a forum feature of this system to have us submit our homework responses and discuss each other's responses. Of course there are "downsides", you'll notice people playing GTA3 during lectures, but its amazing how useful and pervasive these sort of systems can be.
Why not fork?
Even here in the "backward south" we're going wireless (eventually). The College of Charleston, whose Computer Science department was rated best in the Southeast, has a campuswide wireless network put together. Maybe by the time next semester rolls around they'll turn it on. Until then, I'm relegated to the wireless network in and around the J.C. Long building (which covers Andolini's Pizza, behind J.C. Long) and any other networks I can sniff out with Kismet.
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Computer Geek by day, religious Icon by night.
Hmmm... I suspect you'll find that strada isn't covered. The Free Speech Cafe is, on the other hand, so perhaps you'll want to switch your alliances. It's not quite the same, I'll admit...
I helped to implement the wireless network for Baylor University and it's been amazing to see the sociological changes. We have over 98% of the campus covered, and we already see students with iPaqs learning to utilize the system. The next big step we're working on is VoIP for wireless networks, it's been a lot of fun to work on.
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I myself work at a high school which requires every student to own, and use a laptop in class. They have this year put in place a $200,000 NZD WLAN system. The school, entirely focused on being on the bleeding edge of technology, refused to look at the practicality of putting a 802.11b system, the head of IT being perhaps someone vaguely reminiscent of the BOFH's boss... The school, which previously was only running 10Mbps Ethernet, assumed that 10 would be enough for any student. They failed to see however, that sharing one 11mbps Wireless hub with a class of 30 was insufficient, and really only resulted in frustration by the students, when their browsers timed out for the tenth time. To further this, they only then provided a 100mbps backbone for these AP's, which was again insufficient for 1800 students simultaneously using the internet or other network resources (the school employs a groupware system for teacher-student document distribution etc). The school is now, a year later, looking at upgrading all the ap's to 802.11a, at further cost to the students and school. Wireless isnt ready for schools.
Wi-fi is ~2.4GHz, 100mw (in the US) typically. These devices are frequently used in your pocket, or in your lap.
Regulations limit microwave ovens (2.45GHz) to a leakage level of 5mw/cm^2, at roughly 2 inches from the oven.
Is anyone out there concerned about the safety of being bathed in microwave oven radiation?
How about exposing body parts to lots more radiation power than safety levels call for?
At FIU down here in Miami we've been making progress. We've got access throughout the library, in the student union, and in parts of maybe a third of the buildings on campus. I can get access in some of my classrooms but not others.
One of the features I think is nice is that in the library you can borrow a wireless-enable laptop for a few hours, and the computer lab elsewhere loans out PCMCIA cards.
As for security, you have to register the MAC address of your card (through a nice automated system that lets you get up in under 15 minutes) before being able to connect.
I'm a student at RIT where they're trying to roll out some 802.11 access points, they're doing it in like places that have a lot of people, like the cafteria and some choice places. Tried driving outside with netstumbler and such and found NO access points, and the AP's are open. Apparently the brick (99% of the buildings here are done in brick) so it does wonders for security on the AP's.. have to be INSIDE the building and close to the AP to get anything.
Kind of sucks, there's no AP for outside usage.
ekrout wrote:
> Yes, the article's interesting if you're into
> networking and/or wireless data transmission, but
> their explicit focus on Dartmouth makes it seem as
> though they're unique and trendsetting. It's quite
> the contrary, however, as Dartmouth was in no
> way one of the first handful of schools to deploy
> 802.11b.
Actually, the writer was more correct than he knew, as Dartmouth pioneered computing access for its entire student body back in the '60s. Kemeny and Kurtz's BASIC was used to, among other things, set up a requirement that every Dartmouth student would have to demonstrate the ability to write a simple computer program in order to graduate. Dartmouth even provided some students with terminals in their dorm rooms. How cool is that for forty years ago?
"cerf the web"
Never seen that before - and it's sort of cute. I always hated the 'web-surfing' metaphor even though I find myself using it.