Campus alive with wireless

Pop inside a University of Illinois building these days and you're likely to see a sign declaring it a "UIUCnet Wireless" location.

Those signs will become more common, from one end of the campus to the other, as the UI gets deep into a project to cover the university with wireless Internet access.

"We're always trying to respond to students' needs, and this is a priority for them," said Beth Scheid, director of communications technologies for the UI's Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services division.

Scheid and Debra Fligor, manager of the campus wireless program, said the UI is installing wireless systems to serve individual departments that requested it for a few years. But a program to blanket the campus, in connection with a general upgrade of the UI's network systems, began in 2004.

The goal is wireless access in every public area of the campus, Scheid said, basically everything that's not a private office.

Right now, the campus is pretty well covered geographically, with service at least somewhere in most areas, and the task is to fill in the unserved locations, Fligor said.

Those UIUCnet signs are color coded. A blue stripe means pretty much the whole building is covered. Orange means the service is more or less limited to a "hot spot" in the area of the sign. Green means "public spaces" like classrooms and lounges are generally covered.

Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services also has begun deploying a new system that substantially increases the number of users wireless nodes around the campus can handle at once without a big speed hit.

Meanwhile, a 100-foot tower installed recently south of campus will improve coverage on the research farms, at Willard Airport and in facilities such as the Police Training Institute, providing a feed that can be distributed in outlying UI buildings over wired or wireless networks.

UIUCnet works with pretty much any standard Wi-Fi-equipped computer, even hand-held devices. Students and staff need only open a Web browser and enter their network identification and password. For students, it's the same password used to register for classes, Fligor said.

The system lets users e-mail, Web surf and tap most other Internet functions, although the UI blocks some things for security reasons.

For those who need absolute functionality, the university has licensed virtual private networking software, which can be downloaded at: www.cites.uiuc.edu/vpn/index.html.

A list of access points on campus and a map of the areas covered can be found at: www.cites.uiuc.edu/wireless/locations.html.

The UI also plans to open several public wireless hot spots for use by campus visitors, including service in Willard's passenger waiting area and the Krannert Center's Intermezzo Cafe to start, said Mike Smeltzer, director of network communications for the Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services division.

Smeltzer said the Illini Union, the waiting room of the College of Veterinary Medicine's Small Animal Hospital and the cafe at the Siebel Center for Computer science are other likely locations for public hot spots.