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TechTalks Event

Implementing a Campus Wireless LAN: What are the Realities?

with guest expert Alex Hills, ahills@cmu.edu, of New Horizons Telecommunications, Inc. and Carnegie Mellon University

October 19, 2000

Audio
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Transcript

Why do "six-foot columns of water," masonry, and metal create the most difficult issues in planning a wireless LAN? What are the advantages of a campus-wide wireless LAN? What are the disadvantages? What are the design issues? Are there any construction/implementation issues? How do users like the campus wireless LANs you have built? Are there any technical problems after the wireless LANs are in operation? What wireless technologies are on the horizon?

Many of your peers sent in their questions to expert@cren.net and joined Technology Anchor Howard Straus and Co-Host Judith Boettcher on Thursday, October 17 at 4:00 pm Eastern time as they grilled guest expert Alex Hills about the realities of implementing wireless LAN on campus. Alex, who joined us from Alaska, set our new distance record for interviews.

Guest Expert

Alex Hills Alex Hills, ahills@cmu.edu, is Distinguished Service Professor of Engineering and Public Policy and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches telecommunications policy and does research concerning wireless communications and the development of telecommunications systems in rural and remote areas. He served until recently as Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer of the University. In this capacity, he was responsible for the development and operation of Carnegie Mellon's computing and telecommunications systems. This is his second Tech Talk event with CREN.

Alex Hills is also Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of New Horizons Telecommunications, Inc., where he leads a consulting practice which assists clients with the strategic use of communications and information technology. This new area of activity expands the range of services that clients can receive from New Horizons.

Professor Hills has broad experience in information technology, including both technical and business aspects. He is an expert in telecommunications policy, which encompasses engineering, law and economics. Wireless communications technology is also one of his interests, and he has written and lectured on the technology's potential for delivering basic telephone service in the developing world and on its implications for ubiquitous (anytime, anywhere) computing. Alex is the founder of Carnegie Mellon's Wireless Initiative, and one of his recent projects is Wireless Andrew, which is making high speed wireless data network service available to Carnegie Mellon users of laptop and other mobile computers.

Co-Hosts

Howard Strauss, Manager of Academic Applications at Princeton University, is TechTalk's Technology Anchor.

Co-Host Judith Boettcher is CREN's Executive Director. Together, Howard and Judith will ask the really tough questions—and relay the questions you email to them at expert@cren.net.

Background & Resources

In response to a question about wireless health issues which emailed in during the event, we have added this link to the Canadian the Wireless Information Resource Centre (WIRC). Another source for information, the accuracy of which we cannot vouch for, is Microwave News.

Previously-archived CREN Tech Talks, with streaming audio, transcribed audio to read, and hyperlinked resource lists, are great, bookmarkable resources. Here are hyperlinks to some earlier CREN events about wireless networking (most recent first). Remember, each archived Tech Talk includes an audio archive, an edited transcript of the audio, and the hyperlink resources from the event document:

Just last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a four-part series about wireless technologies on campus which ended with a report about CMU: Carnegie Mellon Works to Make Computers Invisible and Pervasive. The others in the series are: Quite a few useful hyperlinks can be found by browsing through the Wireless Andrew pages at Carnegie Mellon. Alex is likely to refer to some of these: Howard also specifically requested we provide this link to a Wired News article about Mount St. Joseph College's wireless implementation. The same college's project was the topic of a presentation at EDUCAUSE 2000 entitled Media-Rich Learning through Universal Computing and Wireless Thin Client.

Judith reports that Scientific American published a Special Industry Report in October on The Wireless Web. She expecially recommends the first of the following articles in that special report:

And here's a very optimistic industry report that says "something different is happening in the wireless industry this year. Vendors across the board are shipping truly interoperable hardware that delivers data rates approaching those of Ethernet."