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Education

Georgia Tech Implements Wireless Campus Net 136

Posted by timothy from the wait-for-802.11A-and-drool dept.
Kenneth Atchinson writes: "This article, which is also publishd in the Ga Tech Alumni magazine, describes how The Georgia Institute of Technology (Ga Tech) is implementing a Campus-Wide Wireless Network. The LAWN (Local Area Wireless/Walkup Network)will cover 15 buildings including their library. They are using high speed, standards based 802.11 hardware. With the LAWN, a campus person with a laptop and a wireless LAN card can access the Net on campus, and maintain their connection while walking between buildings. But don't run to Ga Tech for free access, as they have some kind network authentication scheme to keep non-Ga Tech people off their Net. Kinda make you wish you were in College again, heh? Go Jackets!!!"
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Georgia Tech Implements Wireless Campus Net More

Georgia Tech Implements Wireless Campus Net

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  • And... (Score:1)

    by Dest ( 207166 )
    Georgia tech is a good school? Oh wait, it isn't. I'll stick to RPI.

  • Unintended usage (Score:4)

    by CyberDawg ( 318613 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @01:47PM (#360702) Homepage

    In 1998, I was invited to make a presentation to a state licensing board showing them ways people could use technology to cheat on their license exams. Preparing for that seminar was the most fun I'd had in a long time! Why is that relevant?

    Imagine, if you will, hundreds of students taking a test in a large classroom. One of them, near the back of the room, perhaps, has a little chat session running on his handheld, allowing his friend who took that test during the previous period to feed him all kinds of useful information. Hmmm.

    Coming up with a dozen other ways to cheat on exams using a campus-wide wireless network is left as an exersize for the reader. Coming up with a reliable way to prevent such cheating is a great career move for anyone interested in an IT position with the school.

  • Heck, even "good 'ole Rocky Top" has it. Yes sir, the University of Tennessee Knoxville campus is implementing a campus-wide wireless initiative. Currently, the school of Information Science, the Computer Science Building, the MBA program, the Library, and the University Center are wireless-capable, with more on the way. If you want to check it out, head to the VolNet site [utk.edu]. Enjoy. -AC
    Allen Cain
  • While you may not find full-text for _every_ journal article online, the Internet can, in fact, be quite useful for tracking down relevant journal citations to look up when you do go to the library. I remember spending hours at the library looking through massive bibliographic indexes in order to find articles on more obscure topics when I was in high school. Now it is easy for me to just do a little pre-research on the Web to help me find out information such as the names of leading experts in a particular field that (really) saves me hours of work when I actually do walk down to the library. The Web can be an invaluable resource for serious research if you know what you are doing and use it in combination with traditional research tools. That said, I agree that it sometimes isn't really necessary for students to have such a fat pipe. But remember that a primary purpose of universities is to expose students to the kinds of technologies that they will encounter in the "real world". It makes sense for colleges to stay ahead of the technological curve.
  • Good for Georgia Tech! It's about time wireless innovations are implemented in a largely used network. But I have one question... couldn't all of those waves flying around promote cancer? And if not much, possibly any more than before the wireless network was implemented? I'm only curious...

    Oh, and my subject line... I will probably be attending Georgia Tech after receiving my bachelor's degree at Macon State College about 80 miles south down I-75. Go me. :-)

  • I just found out that these orinoco cards (formerly wavelan) will work with my Ipaq - very cool :). Too bad I go to Portland State University.

  • Drexel (Philadelphia, PA USA) has a complete map [drexel.edu] of their wireless setup. It was started back in 1998, and is still being expanded today.

  • I'm waiting for 802.1x and EAP to become a reality in the majority of the wireless gear out there. Off the shelf solutions will drive what I would choose, not some webserver/firewall thing. It's a solution right now, but 802.1x is really the way to go.

  • Tired of Wired (Score:3)

    by deran9ed ( 300694 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @01:49PM (#360709) Homepage

    Thats funny I just read about Wireless Vending Machines [allnetdevices.com], and would like to point something out for the admins at GIT (if any browse here) as well as anyone using wireless networks.

    The industry is rushing to wireless as it did to the Internet, and it's making the same hurried mistakes regarding security: minimizing its importance to get applications in the hands of users.

    In an environment where beating the market reigns supreme and security takes second chair to proliferation, many experts predict that, much like on the wired Internet, wireless users and IT managers will end up fending off a steady stream of virus attacks, dealing with hacks into user accounts and scrambling to patch security holes. Security efforts that are under way are hampered by divergent networks and protocols and bickering over which methods are best for the wireless world.
    Full article here [zdnet.com] and its pretty straightforward.

    AntiOffline uncovers F.B.I's secret mole [antioffline.com]
  • That is not all that new some highschools and even middle schools are opperating with a couple of those now. Though probably not that wide spread it still puts Georgia Tech to shame at not being that up to date on their area of expertice...technology!
  • ...and it doesn't work worth a damn. They only set up antennas in a few points of the campus, and there's absolutely no reception except for within 50 feet of the antenna.

    If Georgia Tech wants to get campus-wide coverage, they'll have to dot the entire campus with hundreds of these antennas. Not to mention the cat5 cable it'll take to hook up those antennas to the school network.

  • They have been slowly extending the coverage over the last year-and-a-half. The goal is to make sure that coverage is at most a 4 minute walk from any campus building. Not a small feat when you think that UW-Madison is approximately 50,000 students spear out over a campus over 1.5 miles long and about a mile wide.

    I was even one of the techs who tested some of the trial systems before the final hardware was chosen.
  • Can you find the Journal of the American Chemical Society online? (And I mean the real thing, not just a few tasty sample articles on the ACS website.)

    My school [columbia.edu] has a number of online journal subscriptions [columbia.edu] accessible to anyone on the campus subnet (or authenticated to their proxy), including many of the ACS [columbia.edu] journals. Yes, this is full-text and complete. Indeed, one can often find journals online through this service that they don't even have in paper form in the physical library.
    --
    // mlc, user 16290

  • UMCP (Score:1)

    by Fuzzumd ( 98990 )
    University of Maryland, College Park is doing it as well, currently only the main library and one other building (Garrett Hall) are wired up but supposedly, hehe, they will expand on this next year and wire up more of campus. PS. Woohoo, good close game, but we won
  • Stevens Institute of Technology just put up TreeNet, which lets us log in from our laptops just about anywhere, especially outdoors. It's called TreeNet to represent those things you usually only see outside: TREES! Basic idea being to get the pasty white geeks OUT of the dorms and spend some time outdoors... Hey, if they can Quake in the sunlight, better than Quaking indoors, ne? No one on campus plays Starcraft anymore *sob*
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057
  • One of them, near the back of the room, perhaps, has a little chat session running on his handheld, allowing his friend who took that test during the previous period to feed him all kinds of useful information

    If he took it during the previous period, couldn't he just tell him the answers before he went in?

    Care about freedom?

  • Duke University provided all of Krzyzewskiville with wireless access in 1996, if I recall correctly. Duke's Office of Information Tech. put the antenna in a friends dorm window.

  • Umm, we implented a similar system years ago. It has nothing to do with wireless access.

    http://www.netreg.org/ [netreg.org]

    -aaron

  • Re:So? (Score:1)

    by Vilk ( 131239 )
    As a computer science student at GeorgiaTech I feel I should say something on this subject: It is quite possibly news because GaTech is a state university; we have very poor funding and something on this scale, in view of our financial situation, is something of an accomplishment. Granted it isn't front-page-headline-worthy but it is noteworthy nonetheless.

  • So then a user can ONLY use the wireless LAN if they authenticate through a browser? What about people with devices (phones, PDAs) that can get email but not surf the www?

    You're wondering how a cell phone would use the 802.11-based wireless LAN? I think PDAs would be in the same boat -- something powerful enough to do 802.11 should also be powerful enough to run a light-weight web browser. The only email-only PDAs I can think of are those two-way beeper-type deals.

  • I think it's funny that the only people willing to bash RPI did it as anonymous cowards. Anyway, I went to RPI. It's a decent school. I know there are better, I'm sure there are worse ... but the environment there gives you enough freedom to really learn what you want to learn, and not deal with the stuff you don't want to deal with. There's some brilliant people there, and like any school there's some complete retards ... but like most places, if you're able to seek out the truly brilliant people, you can learn a lot from them. I'd like to think that's what I did in my four years there.

    Anyway, whatever the school is missing ... at least now [rpi.edu] we can afford to buy it.

  • So? (Score:4)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @01:36PM (#360722) Homepage Journal
    Wake Forest has been doing this for a couple of years too. Actually, PLENTY of colleges have been doing this! Why is this news??

    - A.P.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • Isn't our entire engineering campus covered? As well as both unions? Pretty much anywhere someone would need it is already covered, and they plan on covering everything soon.
    ___________________________________________ ____________

  • CMU? (Score:2)

    by SuperJ ( 125753 )
    Carnegie Mellon [cmu.edu] has had one for years. Can you get a Palm Pilot to connect to it? Nuh-uh.
  • What's great about that? Many NYC firms and plenty of schools have already been doing that. I was involved in a pilot program 2 years ago at my school where they deployed a small wireless network.
  • Imagine, if you will, hundreds of students taking a test in a large classroom. One of them, near the back of the room, perhaps, has a little chat session running on his handheld, allowing his friend who took that test during the previous period to feed him all kinds of useful information. Hmmm. Students can do this today on a pair of $150 palms and thier ir ports
  • competition! [cmu.edu]

    God does not play dice with the universe. Albert Einstein

  • RPI has had Wireless implemented in the student union already and is going campus wide this summer. The school even loans out free wireless cards when you enter the student union building. Why is this news???
  • You can read more about the security they implemented in Security Still Up in the Air [nwc.com].

    They basically used iptables to allow the wireless MAC address onto the wired LAN after the client had been authenticated off a Kerbros server.

  • Re:Berkeley has had this for years (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, I go to Berkeley and I don't think we have it. Would you care digging a berkeley.edu page about it, or you prefer to correct your statement (e.g.: only one building/doesn't radio count?/I made that up)
  • Of course it doesn't work. I implemented several Lucent base stations here; they interefere with cordless phones, they work when they feel like it, and aliens could fly over and interrupt it at any time. I don't understand the wireless craze. Yeah copper sucks but at least it works most of the time. This new wireless stuff has a long way to go.
  • I graduated from there a year or two ago, but when I was there, it _WAS_ a federal depository. And yes, they did allow access to anyone. They always asked for a student ID when you came in, but you didn't _have_ to have one. They made it difficult for others to come in and look around, but anyone could if they were persistent, without breaking any of the rules. They just didn't want everyone to know about this.
  • A fair number of my engineering professors at Carnegie Mellon (where 802.11 has been around for a long time) have added clauses to the coversheet of their tests that goes something along the lines of:
    No calculators, PDAs, laptops or wireless devices allowed.
    On open-book tests, I have yet to see a laptop allowed on the test. On the other hand, one of my psychology professors said that she would love to have every student use a laptop to type up the essay portions of her tests, but it's simply not feasable at this time. It would definitely require a high degree of trust, particularly in the larger lecture classes.

    On the other hand, the professor and a number of students in one of my classes have laptops with wireless cards. When a discussion comes up, somebody frequently comes up with a usenet post or web page resource relating to our discussion. More than once, the professor has written slews of email to students who are sitting only a few feet from him (wireless definitely adds to this class).

  • In addition to the fact that there are thousands of other ways to cheat than a wireless device (such as just looking at someone else's paper as many college examins are not givin in idea conditions), THERE ARE ALREADY DEVICES THAT CAN DO THIS. While all of the following solutions use IR instead of radio, they work almost as well: The IR port on a palm pilot, The IR port on fancy HP calculators (allowed on most tests), A secreat sender (kinda stupid, but usually assumed to be harmless by most teachers).
  • Let's see some EVIDENCE.

    Otherwise, you can just stop moaning about something that probably won't hurt you at all.

    After all the nuclear tests, chemical contamination, car exhaust, and unnatural living conditions we experience in modern life, the best thing you can come up with to complain about is radio waves? Give me a break.

    If you really think radio waves are going to "heat up your noggin" you can wear a metal helmet. The electromagnetic shielding effect is the same thing that keeps your radio from working in a tunnel. And after that, I suggest you pour yourself a nice stiff drink and worry about something that actually has been proven to hurt you... like all that car exhaust you breathe every day.

    Some people!

  • bay43270 uttered, "Students can do this today on a pair of $150 palms and thier ir ports".

    And how many classrooms have you been in where you could establish an IR (line-of-sight) link with someone not in the classroom without being really obvious?

  • The University of Alaska Juneau http://www.uas.alaska.edu campus has had wireless for over a year. It supports palm, Apple Airport, and several other protocals. Every building has at least one antena, and some, like the library, have several. The coverage and service is excelent. All you have to do is register your WNIC with computing services, and your on the air. All in all it's pretty sweet. Oh and did I mention connected to an OC3? (This is a school with 3000 students enroled, and even less with laptops)

    Maskirovka

  • Re:So? (Score:1)

    by p0d ( 56980 )
    I don't want to bother to look at the possibly big list below this comment of schools that do have this already, but you have a point. Even my University (Univ. of Miami) has implemented this, and we only got plain old wired Ethernet in the dorms 3 years ago! What's so bloody special that Georgia Tech does it. Well maybe it's special that it took a Tech. school so long to do it while Wake Forest, and a bleedin' educational corporation (University of Miami, Inc. a subsidiary of Dell, Microsoft, and Coca Cola) in the Miami Republic beat them out. Really though! Maybe the next article in the educational domain can be when they finally switch the lab i manage from copper to fibre like the others!

  • Re:So? (Score:1)

    by p0d ( 56980 )
    Ga Tech as 15000 students which means around "potentially" many users on the wireless net. Again, there's 15,000 or more students at a lot of universities that have this, mine included...why is this news?
  • I work for Apple, and the whole campus is wired like that! There is almost 0 dead zone in all the buildings!
    Cheers,
    Tomas
    ===========
  • Not a big loss. Have you seen the women here?
  • i just finished the wireless job in my house. NO if all my friends has wireless nics lanwars would not be such a wiring mess!
  • Of course right after I move off campus they decide to go and this. They need to extend the net a quarter mile off-campus so that my apartment would be covered... Chris G. chrisg@resnet.gatech.edu
  • I go to Georgia Tech and I didn't know about this. I need to get a wireless LAN card for the crusty old Thinkpad I have (which I only have because it has a corner of the screen blacked out and a hard drive with an overwhelming number of bad clusters as a result of one of my dad's coworkers dropping it, twice). Then I can buy a scanner and scan all of my textbooks (not sure if I should try to OCR them or just leave them as jpegs), store them on my desktop computer, and access them remotely by wireless LAN. After all, I have far more free disk space than I need right now.


    "Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
    (I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)

  • I don't think the Georgia Tech library is a "Federal Book depository," at least in this sense. If a Federal Book despository has to allow anyone access, then the Tech library isn't one. When I went there, you had to have an ID card to get in the library (at least most of the time, when the guard wasn't sleeping or talking to someone).

    On a side note, I say good for Tech. When I was there, I started the IFC committee to get ethernet into the greek houses (it eventually went into other non-university houses as well). Tech has always had some cool network stuff going on, so good for them.

  • University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, TX is in the beginning phases of implementing this right now in conjunction with IBM. We're also part of the IBM Laptop University program, and the wireless cards are given to all the students for free.. So far we have 5 buildings that we can use it at, inside and immediately outside, but by the fall, they're supposed to have the entire campus wired, so to speak..

    Justin

  • Point the finger (Score:5)

    by deran9ed ( 300694 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @01:59PM (#360747) Homepage

    Imagine, if you will, hundreds of students taking a test in a large classroom. One of them, near the back of the room, perhaps, has a little chat session running on his handheld, allowing his friend who took that test during the previous period to feed him all kinds of useful information. Hmmm.
    Now imagine if you will, a professor who took the time to wander through that large classroom or assistants along with the professor who monitored what was going on during the exam instead of sitting back reading the latest news instead of doing his job

    Coming up with a dozen other ways to cheat on exams using a campus-wide wireless network is left as an exersize for the reader. Coming up with a reliable way to prevent such cheating is a great career move for anyone interested in an IT position with the school.
    People are people and they don't neccessarily need a wireless device to cheat on an exam as they've done so for years before computers were even used in school, so this argument to me is a bit meaningless.

    I will take note though that some of these campuses are overspending budget funds by purchasing some of these services (Internet based) I mean think about it on a reality based level, do you need a T1 or even a fraction of one coming into a college dorm? Sure they need net access to study but a better method would have been a reimbursement based plan to pay what they use, this way tax payer dollars stay down, colleges can purchase more, overspending is cut down, and abuse doesn't skyrocket.

    Where in the world is SpeedyGrl [speedygrl.com]
  • most classes at gt don't even allow students to use pocket calculators, much less pda's.
  • Don't get me wrong - I am a tech freak too. But the electromagnetic smog around us gets thicker and thicker and I am not sure if that really has no influence on us.

    When they find out the cellular phones heat up the noggin because of the not-neglectable power these beasts emit - what if I have to sit day after day in an area where they add more and more frills and thus more and more electromagnetic 'waste'...?

    I wonder when GaTech (or someone else doin' the same) first gets sued by an ex-pregnant student/employee that gave birth to a negatively-influenced (as not to say mutilated) child... Sigh. Need a loong sommer somewhere in the wilderness...

  • Hey, I go to Berkeley and I don't think we have it. Would you care digging a berkeley.edu page about it, or you prefer to correct your statement (e.g.: only one building/doesn't radio count?/I made that up)

    Far as I know, all Berkeley has is a deal with Metricom for Ricochet service. Much slower than what we're talking about here, but on the other hand you can go all over Berkely/San Francisco with it.

  • They seem alright to me.
    (^o^)
    nsh2@andrew
  • "Sure they need net access to study..." Since when? I don't remember that the Internet was of any utility for studying anything of academic value. Can you find the Journal of the American Chemical Society online? (And I mean the real thing, not just a few tasty sample articles on the ACS website.) Or, indeed, leaving aside commercial publications like the New York Times, reference materials of _any_ sort of reliability or credibility?

    I don't know whence comes this myth that the Internet is useful for research. Now and again I wish to look up item of scientific interest--some formula in physics, say--and _every time_ I've turned to the Internet for research purposes, I would have been better served if I'd driven to the nearest library. I probably would have found my information quicker, too--it takes a few seconds to search and a few quarter-hours to wade through the oceans of garbage which the search turns up. A search for information on a chemical reaction is more likely to turn up half a dozen pages on cooking up a batch of N-methylamphetamine, instead of anything of serious research value.

    But, hell, going to school to _learn_ something is out of fashion these days. You go to school to play Quake ten hours a day, and trade in music and software bootlegs.

    hyacinthus.
  • You wanna know what else? This thing has been on at Tech for a couple of years too. Blame it on the high-horse alumni that are responsible for the magazine. I swear, one of the worst aspects of going there is dealing with people who take too much pride in being a Ga. Tech alumni.

    --Xantho

  • You wanna know what else? This thing has been on at Tech for a couple of years too. Blame it on the high-horse alumni that are responsible for the magazine. I swear, one of the worst aspects of going there is dealing with people who take too much pride in being a Ga. Tech alumni.

    --Xantho

  • Drexel has had a wireless network for a while also but in September when they officially announced it, it covers a Metropolitan Area Network to include MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine in East Falls and MCP Hahnemann University in Center City, both of which Drexel operates. They network requires a 128-bit encrypted wireless Ethernet adapter that must be registered with Drexel's IT department in order to access the network. The network gets speeds up to 2.5 Gbps and will eventually be connected directly to the Internet2 which the dorms are already connected to. That was all explained in the link I provided for more information....
  • That's why we have an honor system at my college, if you get caught, you get kicked out.
  • You wanna know what else? This thing has been on at Tech for a couple of years too. Blame it on the high-horse alumni that are responsible for the magazine. I swear, one of the worst aspects of going there is dealing with people who take too much pride in being a Ga. Tech alumni.

    --Xantho

  • 4 years as undergrad, 3 years as employee. I'll stick with just going to the games.


    --
    Never knock on Death's door.
    Ring the doorbell and run
    (He hates that).
  • And I could do this back in 1993 with my HP calculator. At a much better range too.
    _____________
  • See
    http://www.cs.pdx.edu/research/SMN/index.html
  • From radio waves?
  • Kinda make you wish you were in College again, heh? Go Jackets!!!

    I spent 7 years there in grad school. I'll take a dialup connection rather than go back. And they're always begging for money from me!

  • I talked to Al Gore about this, and he said it was good to see the universities around the country adopting this technology. He says he envisioned this when he helped start the internet a scant 10 years ago.

    It's nice to see some members of the government actually getting it.

  • Georgia Tech got one of the letters from the RIAA and there was some brief discussion of it, but I think that the administration has more or less ignored it. If the RIAA ever tries to sue Georgia Tech for allowing students to use Napster, my plan is to file a class action suit against the RIAA for all of the students here, since taking money from my school harms my education.


    "Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
    (I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)

  • You forgot to add... (Score:3)

    by deran9ed ( 300694 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @02:04PM (#360765) Homepage
    NCR then sued the students for not asking permission down the chain of command while using their Palms, following the students claim of Invasion of Privacy by guards who glimpsed (unauthorized) at their screens to determine that the students indeed were playing Quake. Pending is the reaction from IDSoftware who's latest filings show the students had not sought permission to port Q3 to the AtheOS [atheos.cx] operating system.

    Shakespeare in dub [antioffline.com]
  • but i think they have a team of monkeys working on it, it all seems like pipe dreams to me. They've been saying we are getting one for months, and i've talked to people actually working on it but it seems like it will be a long time before it's anything worth bragging about. They should wait until 802.11a becomes a reality.
  • And its up to 11 megabits now adays... largest wireless network in the world they say. This isn't new.
  • This is pretty neat. In fact I'm gettin some wirelss equipment within the next few days. Gonna set it up so I can use my laptop everywhere.

  • Re:Security Implementation HOWTO? (Score:5)

    by Aztech ( 240868 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @02:25PM (#360769)
    The Georgia Tech design uses the IP Tables firewall functions in the latest Linux kernel to provide the packet-filtering operation. When a client joins the wireless/walk-up network, the firewall/router hands out a DHCP address. To authorize access, the client must open a Web browser. The HTTP or HTTPS (HTTP Secure) request from the client triggers an automatic redirect to an authentication page from the gateway, and the authentication request is passed to a Kerberos server. If authentication is successful, a PERL script adds the IP address to the rules file, making it a "known" address to the IP Tables firewall process
    There was some papers available from their site, however it seems to be firewalled now, but it's still available [google.com] through google cache. Here's the intro page [google.com]

    There's also some papers here [tu-berlin.de] and here [indiana.edu]

    On an unrelated note, there's been some research [microsoft.com] on locating users using 802.11b.
  • I know that Ryerson in Toronto has had one for years.. The school sells pcmcia cards that are wireless 10mbs modems..

  • And in other news... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And in other news...

    • Fire was discovered. Cavemen everywhere rejoiced as they could finally taste cooked flesh of beast. Orrg the Caveman is suing the discoverer, Ook, over patent infringement, claiming that he actually discovered fire first, and holds the patent on the idea.
    • Man walks on moon. Major television network is set to rebuke this in 30 years.
    • President Kennedy was Shot while taking a ride in Texas
    • A small baby learns to say "Dada"
    • A comet passed dangerously close to our solar system
    • The sun rose
    • Tide came in this morning. Scientists are saying that the moon is the leading cause of tidal shifts, but that theory is under investigation.


    Get the idea?

    POST RELEVANT SHITE.
  • ...this is no reason to stop worrying. And with the LA example you see what an influence smog has on people's brains! ;-) (no offense intended...)

  • Carnegie Mellon has a great wireless ethernet system. There are a few outdoor hubs so people lounging in Schenley park can enjoy internet access. It's geeky enough for me =)

    --
    Max V.
  • Some how I just can't see someone irc'ing to EFnet and asking people there how to solve integral of log(x).
  • do you need a T1 or even a fraction of one coming into a college dorm?

    Of course, why do you think Napster is so popular? Your granny downloading Britney Spears songs? It's all part of a vast RIAA conspiracy to gain billions in "lost revenue" from Napster.

    -antipop

  • ...get ethernet into the greek houses...

    When I was there (late 80s), the Beta Theta Pi house (right behind the main computer building) seemed to always have a scheme going involving running ethernet to their house.

    Over in the dorms, we were happy to have 9600kbps dialup using data-over-voice (call it a very early DSL). Though the top floor of Armstrong had a loop of 300-ohm twinlead that got used for various purposes like a movie feed from a VCR (in the pre-CATV days) and some oddball LAN.

  • A wireless network will not make any difference to whether people cheat or not, and it isn't likely to make them significantly more successful in their classwork. Georgia Tech has an honesty policy in which students are implicity trusted and in return profs give them copies of old exams, old problem set, etc from which to study. We aren't in a courtroom, but innocent before proven guilty is still a good maxim.
  • Keeping America Informed [gpo.gov] is a pamphlet from the Federal Depository Library Program that outlines some facts about Federal Depositories. It specifically mentions "No-fee online access (through the Internet or dial-up) to the Federal Register, Congressional Record, Congressional bills introduced in the Congress, Code of Federal Regulations, Commerce Business Daily, public laws, and over 80 Government databases." Nowhere does it mention fee-free access to the entire Internet.

    Do you have a reference to support your position that libraries serving as Federal Depositories are required to have open electronic access to the Internet?

    It's also worth noting that an access-controlled wireless LAN is unlikely to be violation of such laws (if they exist) as long as it exists in parallel with an unrestricted method of access (such as a terminal lab).

    --S

  • Drexel [drexel.edu] has had this for about a year or so now. Things are just now getting to the point where most places on campus are accessible. Some of the big block buildings have some trouble with signal strength in certain places, but overall it's quite good coverage, and is improving with time. Now that I am so used to this kind of always-on 11Mbps connection, I don't know what I will do when I graduate. Riccochet just won't cut it unless they get a LOT faster
  • The non-electromagnetic smog in Atlanta will kill you first. Of course, the smog here is not as bad as the smog in some other cities, such as Los Angeles where it already has killed everyone.


    "Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
    (I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)

  • Don't forget the two-year and tech schools. SUNY Morrisville [morrisville.edu] has been named "America's Most Wired University" among two-years. I guess until a private institution puts out a press release, it's not news.
  • What are you smoking? Do you really think there is some federal regulation which requires Georgia Tech to give a LAN connection to anybody who happens to be walking down the street? Because that is exactly what you are doing if you don't implement some sort of security on your 802.11 LAN. This stuff can go up to 25 miles with the right antennas. If you really think that this is the case, well that's well and good. But I would be very suprised if you could find any documentation for this claim that libraries are required to provide free ISP access to anybody in the general geographic area.
  • Wouldn't be too hard. Perhaps you could talk them into setting up a point-to-point wireless bridge [proxim.com] between the campus and your apartment. ;)
  • albeit only in the Gates computer science building, currently. It's a WaveLAN setup, offering 10 mbps wireless Ethernet access.

    A paper about our authentication scheme [stanford.edu], which is based on our campus Kerberos infrastructure. We don't need to pre-register MAC addresses, unless some other schemes.

  • Oakland University - Rochester, Mi has this as well - for it's East Campus and Dorms. http://www3.oakland.edu/oakland/newsinfo/view_news .asp?newsid=321
  • Really... How long do you think it'll take for some student to publish his/er own Howto? Or, what usually happens is that the university, tired of dealing w/ freshmen will post explicit instructions on their webpage. Nice though, that now you can sit in a comfy chair and surf, or, God forbid, get some sun. "The yellow eye! She burns ussssss....."

  • In local campus news today... (Score:4)

    by devphil ( 51341 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @01:39PM (#360789) Homepage


    ...two Computer Science students were treated for broken noses and released, after a full-on collision on the sidewalk. Both students were crossing campus in between courses, and were completely engrossed in the Q3 CTF games running on their respective palmtops.

  • In fact Here's [slashdot.org] the slasdot article on it.
    News for nerds, stuff that matters (even if it is really old news)

    --
  • Drexel [drexel.edu] University is doing this too. They started putting up the 'hubs' about a year ago, so far the coverage is spotty. As for authentication, you have to register your card's MAC address with them. They reseve the right to intercept traffic. To make a long story short untill all the bugs are worked out(im giving it 5 to 6 years) it's gonna be more trouble than it's worth.
  • From the article:
    Will this wireless corridor allow someone driving by the campus to log into the campus network and the Internet undetected? To prevent such unauthorized access and hacking, OIT developed its own authentication program requiring wireless users to log in through a web browser before access to the Internet is granted.
    So then a user can ONLY use the wireless LAN if they authenticate through a browser? What about people with devices (phones, PDAs) that can get email but not surf the www? They won't be allowed to connect and pop their mail? This sounds rather proprietary and sucky. Not to mention short-sighted and ignorant. Ick.


    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is on the way to this too. They installed wireless hubs in the 3-story ceiling of the student union where they get poor reception just about everywhere, and are probably overly expensive and will soon be obsolete. This seems like a bit of a waste of money, really.

    I would rather have a nice workstation in the lab, or another research project started.

    But RPI is number one wired school in america now that they have mandated every freshman to buy a laptop before attending.

    Damnned if we use 'em.

  • Same goes for Caltech (I don't go there, but know people who do). Most of their (maybe all) of their exams are take-home. However, they can still be timed, and closed-notes if the professor so chooses.

    Of course, if you tried to implement such an honor code here at ASU, you would get laughed at and taken advantage of. :(

  • And now the whole campus is covered.
    http://www.drexel.edu/IRT/wireless/ [drexel.edu]

    You do have to register your NIC with the IRT, presumably to keep just anyone from leaching off our fiber backbone.

  • I can't speak for Georgia Tech itself, but if it's like other institutions of higher learning, its library is a Federal Book depository. This means it has certain privileges like being qualified to house official copies of Federal documents. But it also means there are certain regulations and restrictions regarding access. One of those has to do with network access, which the new LAN setup sounds like it violates.

    It makes sense to require unrestricted network access at the Congressional level, as is the case here. If people are denied access, then one of the fundamental tenets of western civilization is violated: the free access to and flow of information. Throughout history, libraries have been public institutions serving the public good by disseminating information previously guarded in the hands of the few. The Revolutionary war our nation was founded on was fought as much because of restrictive lending privileges at the Bodlean as because of the tyranny of mercantilism or Parliamentary taxation.

    What are they honestly afraid of? It's not as though individuals will be flocking to the library to steal their bandwidth (which is their right, btw, under Federal law, as I mentioned). Are they afraid more vagrants will enter and disturb the delicate institutional framework they have worked so hard to erect and worked so passionately to defend from interlopers? I hardly think the incidence of homeless people traipsing in with their laptops will increase.
  • Dartmouth College has announced the same thing. They hope to have it operational this fall.

    I expect that in two years, having a wireless network for a campus will be as standard as ethernet in the dorms has become.
  • CMU has had a Campus-wide wireless network for a while now. The Wireless Andrew project was started in 1994, using 915 MHz technology, and was later upgraded to 2.4 GHz 802.11-based technology from Lucent/Orinoco.

    All of the academic buildings have coverage. A large portion of the outdoor academic campus is also covered. (No coverage in the dorms, though.)

    For more information, see:
    [cmu.edu]
    http://www.cmu.edu/computing/wireless/

  • Several schools do this (summary) (Score:3)

    by paulschreiber ( 113681 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @02:48PM (#360824) Homepage
    I wrote an article [uwaterloo.ca] about this for our school paper one and a half years ago.

    We (Waterloo [uwaterloo.ca]) still don't have a wireless network.

    Here's who does:

    Grumble, grumble. So much for us being a high tech school.

    Paul

  • As a graduate student in Computer Science, I find that Internet access is quite highly useful. Researchers tend to put links to their research papers [mit.edu] online and this is far more convenient than going to the library to look for paper you need and finding that the only copy was stolen last week.

    In general you don't look on the journals' and conferences' pages, you look at researchers' pages to track down those references. The ACM Digital Library [acm.org] has a number of useful papers, but a lot of the papers were scanned in as bitmaps and so they look terrible.

  • My high school [ncssm.edu] is talking about implementing this sort of thing. Last I checked they were claiming at start of next year. More likely later than that, but still VERY cool. Course, I'll be in college by then... Ah well.
  • We've already had a similar service at UC Irvine since last year. By summer of this year, it will become campus wide .. check it out at http://www.nacs.uci.edu/ucinet/mobile/ [uci.edu]

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