No Strings Attached: College Unveils Wireless Network

Your $18 cellular phone will let you browse the net, send e-mail and download information from just about anywhere you like. Your $2000 laptop, on the other hand, can only do it if you happen to have a network cable and an available wall jack connection. Something is just not right with that picture. At least in the College of Education (and around it actually), the picture just got fixed. With a new wireless network system up and running, College faculty, staff and students are now a wireless card away from putting their bright yellow network cables in the same garage-sale box as their floppy drives.

The project, undertaken jointly by the College Office of Educational Technology (OET) and by CITES (Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services) has been in the planning and development stages for over a year according to Jobertito Cuaresma, one of the network administrators for the College. Much of the delay has been caused by the nuances of this relatively new technology and by the Education building itself.

"The wireless-unfriendly makeup and layout of the building made it into an almost logistically impossible 3D puzzle for placing wireless access points," says Cuaresma. "Despite the obstacles, the CITES wireless team did an excellent job in predicting and implementing an infrastructure that provides almost 100% coverage."

Current wireless technology may never be quite as fast or as highly reliable as a wired connection, but the gained mobility of a persistent wireless connection can open up new possibilities in daily administrative tasks and personal and instructional uses. For example, instructors will have the freedom to move about a classroom while still being able to manipulate the classroom computer via a wireless connection

While in actual use, a wireless connection appears no different than a traditional one, security concerns require users of the College network to have a specialized "Virtual Private Network (VPN)" software package installed on their machine. The VPN software provides a secure encrypted connection over the wireless network.

The biggest concern with wireless networks is that they're basically broadcast signals carrying information. And, just like a radio or cordless phone, someone with the right equipment can listen in." To take advantage of the secure service, users would simply have to authenticate through the installed VPN client with their existing UIUC login and password, much like logging in through a traditional dial-up phone connection.

Cuaresma says faculty and staff already on the new network have been giving it rave reviews and expects access requests to grow quickly as word gets out. Any student, faculty or staff member with a University of Illinois network account is eligible to access the Education wireless network.

The Education Building is one of only about 10 buildings on the Urbana-Champaign campus with a full coverage wireless network.

For more detailed information about the hardware and software you need to begin taking advantage of the College of Education wireless network, visit the Tech-To-Go office located in room 31 Education, or visit www.ed.uiuc.edu/cio/network on the web.