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Wireless Networking Education Hardware

CWRU Opens Largest Wi-Fi Net 135

server1 writes "In what could be the largest public wireless service in the world, Case Western Reserve University is opening more than 1,230 Cisco Aironet 1200 Series wireless access points on September 1, providing free Internet access to faculty, students, staff and visitors to the Case campus and University Circle." Good news for Clevelanders looking for some free wireless internet access.
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CWRU Opens Largest Wi-Fi Net

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  • Yay, Northeast Ohio! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Corvaith ( 538529 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @11:48AM (#6833061) Homepage
    University of Akron's also got very good wireless coverage, and they push laptops rather heavily. It was so terribly convenient. I'm not going there anymore, alas... I miss it. The speed was really blazing, and nothing compares to the ability to actually be online looking up information related to your lectures while they're happening... can make for a much greater understanding of the material.

    Alas, my current school has some kind of fledgling deal going on, but so far I haven't even been able to get it to work, and they aren't very good about providing information on it. :(
    • the ability to actually be online looking up information related to your lectures while they're happening... can make for a much greater understanding of the material

      Hm, I try to pull up the prof's powerpoint slides and try to follow the lecture, but I usually end up refreshing slashdot.org like a mad man.

      I don't know if the profs have figured out the AOL IM sounds and pattering keyboards means the students aren't taking notes on their laptops...

      • This is why computers include *volume controls* with *mute options*.

        I did all those things, too, but I multitask well, and type very fast, so would usually end up with free space in the periods where the instructor was waiting for everybody else to write things down.
    • I goto Kent State and I really wish we had wireless to saturate the campus with...its a pain to carry a patch cable just to plugin somewhere. Not that I really think its all that useful to have access or a laptop IN class...but I use mine between classes to write papers and things while the labs are busy.

      BTW, KSU had a nice comeback victory against the Zips thursday ;)
      • There *is* access, allegedly, in some places. I get a connection in the student center, tried using it once, it comes up--in the web browser--with some kind of login screen, and then claims that my login is valid but that I'm not allowed to login without a 'secure' connection.

        I wasn't even aware that there were that many places to plugin to the network, though. I haven't been bothering... hard enough finding places with outlets to recharge in the middle of the day.

    • University of Akron's also got very good wireless coverage, and they push laptops rather heavily. It was so terribly convenient. I'm not going there anymore, alas... I miss it. The speed was really blazing, and nothing compares to the ability to actually be online looking up information related to your lectures while they're happening... can make for a much greater understanding of the material.

      Alas, my current school has some kind of fledgling deal going on, but so far I haven't even been able to get it
    • I am a student at Case, and these wireless points are all "secured" - that is, you have to have a wireless card with an approved MAC address in order to use any of these APs, so the original poster was incorrect - this will have absolutely no effect on the greater Cleveland area.... no free internet.
      • BTW, I know if you RTFA, it says the access is for visitors too, but thats just PR bullshit. You have to have thier VPN client installed and have your MAC address registered with access services.
  • why so many? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Comsn ( 686413 )
    why would you need 1000 ap's? arent these things good for at least 100 meters? just how big is CWRU?
    • Re:why so many? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't know about CWRU, but my school has a lot of stone and brick buidings. 2.4GHz doesn't go 100 meters that way. Even a class room of people could suck your power way down.
    • Re:why so many? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The goal is to make most of the Cleveland area to have free WI-FI available. The Playhouse Square are also just went wireless for free (www.cleveland-freenet.com)
    • I'd say maybe they're using a superfluous amount because "1000 access points" has a nicer zing to it than "we have 462 aps" does, which may have been the actual number needed if it were based on how much area was needed to cover. Keep in mind, a lot of this is to impress people to attract attention, money and applicants to a school. Touting that number is more buzz-worthy than saying We cover X square feet. You hear that, and you think, "Hot-damn, that's a lot of access points! They must really care about n
      • Re:why so many? (Score:2, Informative)

        by scseth ( 127105 )

        The campus at Akron has over 1000 access points for full coverage in and outside of buildinds. I know of other universities around the US (Tulane, UofTenesee) that also easily have that many as well. As you start doing the site planning the numbers of APs can easily start to add up. The 1000 number for Case does not seem unrealistic to me.
      • Spoken like someone who's never tried to provide coverage in dozens of large several stories tall buildings made of brick and stone and steel. One access point covers a lot of space in a house made of two-by-fours, but these type of buildings are a different manner. Add in the fact that in some of the large labs (100+ med students all on laptops) you need a few access points to cover the same area just to make sure they don't get bogged down. There are a number of campuses that have 1000 access points.
    • From the article:

      ...providing free Internet access to faculty, students, staff and visitors to the Case campus and University Circle. (emphasis mine)

      Looking on this page [universitycircle.org], the University Circle is quite a large area, with bussinesses, museums, etc. They purposefully covered an area much larger than the campus. It might be that there are even some University facilities in the extended area, far from the main campus (this tends to be the case with old universities in urban environments).

      But, as another post

    • CWRU spans about 2 square miles and parts include the Cleveland Clinic, also spanning around a square mile. In addition because of the frequency overlap, the channels have to be 3 apart from each other. The total area covered is quite vast. Actually i'm surprised they aren't using more than they are.
    • CWRU uas a medium size campus, but it is in the middle of Cleveland, so there are lots of buildings.

      Buildings = reflected signals = interference

      anyways, 100 meters without hopped up antennas + amps (read: FCC violation) is a pipe dream. 100 feet with a reliable signal is rare.
  • by Blrfl ( 46596 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @11:49AM (#6833067) Homepage
    ...Cleveland becomes the world's spam capital.
  • by Alan_Peery ( 621338 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @11:50AM (#6833071)
    This is the way I expect WiFi access to evolve. Fee paying (particularly at more than $1/day) WiFi hotspots will only survive in spots with limited access and one landlord like airports.
  • So? (Score:5, Informative)

    by pirodude ( 54707 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @11:53AM (#6833086)
    I don't really see how this is news. Purdue has a good 1600 access points on campus and have total coverage in all the buildings and are working on open space coverage now. Any student/staff member can use it free. Here's our coverage map: http://www.itap.purdue.edu/airlink/WirelessCurrent 3.pdf
    • Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)

      by BlueTooth ( 102363 ) * on Saturday August 30, 2003 @12:02PM (#6833149) Homepage
      I think the point is that you don't have to be student / faculty to use this. Hence "largest public".
      • by gniv ( 600835 )
        That's what they imply in the press release. But on another page [case.edu] they say something else:

        Only current students, faculty and staff of CWRU are authorized to use the wireless network and VPN services.

        Does this mean that the "public" can use the network, but not the VPN? It's not clear from their pages. Anyone tried it?
    • Case is offering free access to people who aren't associated with Case. That's why.
  • Now if some company would be so kind as to provide decent bandwidth to rural Canada that would make me *very* happy.


    Are you on the grapevine yet ? [wwgrapevine.com]

    • If low-bandwidth (and streaming things in gradually) would interest you, check into CDPD. When I was in Manitoba last summer, MTS offered always-on connectivity at $CA 40/month--in places where telephone lines were not available. (IE, very rural.)

      There were two drawbacks:

      1) Equipment outlay was about $1500
      2) Bandwidth was not high. Theoretically 9.6 Kbaud, the higher latency and error rate than a wired connection reduced the throughput.

      • interesting, thank you !

        I'm looking in to mulitple phone lines and multi-channel ppp tunneling to Toronto (where my servers are hosted), then hit the net from there.

        DSL is a couple of years away at least here (rural (very rural :) northern Ontario), I can get about 20 Kbit/sec out of a phone line so 5 or so of them should do it. This is strictly business use (ww.com, camarades.com and the wwgrapevine.com) so I'm not too concerned about the per month cost if it is not something exorbitant.

        The most frus

  • by morgajel ( 568462 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @11:54AM (#6833099)
    Don't abuse it. if you want to go kazaa-ing, go somewhere else. remember- when people are nice, and you abuse their trust, they tend not to be nice anymore.

    Try to keep it to a dull roar, or use something encrypted at least. If you make it blatently obvious that you're doing any sort of mp3 swaping, the BSA and RIAA will rain the holy shitstorm of litigation on the school.
    make sure if you use it, you write a letter of praise or something to the dean or head of IT praising their decision to make it open to the public.
    • the BSA and RIAA will rain the holy shitstorm of litigation on the school.

      When was the last time someone sued the phone companies for criminals using public payphones in the street? Wouldn't we all find that idea ridiculous?
      • They don't. (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        They modify the phones for out-bound calls only, or in the worst cases, simply shut the phones down.
    • If they don't use some traffic shaping software to slow down the P2P traffic I'd be suprised. It sounds like they've thought out the design well enough that P2P traffic shouldn't come as a suprise.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 30, 2003 @12:00PM (#6833138)
    All the little nerds with the crimson Pringles cans
    Singing Cleveland WAPS Cleveland WAPS
    Living in Sin with a bogus MAC
    Singing Cleveland WAPS Cleveland WAPS
  • "could be"??? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Douglas Simmons ( 628988 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @12:01PM (#6833141) Homepage
    Last time I've checked, Drexel University [drexel.edu] in Philadelphia held this wireless title, not to mention the fastest Internet link of any university. When an announcement touts a school like this with "could be" instead of "is" makes me suspicious that they worded it in a way that could either allow what they're claiming to be false, or they didn't bother to fact check to confirm its validity.

    Anyone know more about where Drexel weighs in? Kind of a silly pissing contest, but having the Best or Fastest (blank) for a school is good marketing.
    • The implication here is that CWRU's network is publically accessible. At last check, Drexel's network was *not* publically accessible (MAC locked, IIRC).

      Of course, things may have changed and I could be wrong...

  • by Krapangor ( 533950 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @12:07PM (#6833175) Homepage
    1. a laptop with Linux/FreeBSD
    2. a WiFi card with reconfigurable ID
    3. assorted 31337 h4x0ring programs
    4. a ticket to Cleveland
    Risk: 0%
    Profit: 100%
  • by Psiren ( 6145 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @12:19PM (#6833229)
    I run a College network, and the thought of any Tom, Dick or Harry being able to wander in and use my network for pretty much anything would be enough to give me nightmares for a month. Can you imagine the potential security issues there, or virus outbreaks? Cold shower time...

    While I see wireless as a potentially flexible system, it is a security and management nightmare. We've banned our students from using their own wireless routers for just this reason.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Two Words: Separate networks.
      If you got the money for cisco gear, you can afford a pix and a good router.
      • This year was the first year we've had two vlans in our residence halls - one for the residential network & one for wireless access points in the residence halls. Unfortuneatly, XP has made it really easy for students to bridge the two networks together and wreak havoc for us. Tracking down the bridging machines is a nightmare.

        We're currently 3com core (cb9k) to edge (3300s & 4400s), but doing a fork lift Cisco core replacement this winter. Hopefully life will get better when we replace the core, b
    • I run a College network, and the thought of any Tom, Dick or Harry being able to wander in and use my network for pretty much anything would be enough to give me nightmares for a month. Can you imagine the potential security issues there, or virus outbreaks? Cold shower time...

      But they can already, most likely. Where are your Ethernet ports? If someone just plugs a laptop into one, what will happen? (On most networks, the DHCP server will issue the laptop an address and the "intruder" can go about his/h

    • Sorry, this sounds aggressive; it is not meant to be. (Please) assume the message is meant charitably...

      Can you imagine the potential security issues there,

      I'm sure there are security issues, but can you name some actual issues? The issues I can think of are no different than what you see with *any* anonymous internet use. For administrators, I see a need to be sure campus machines are relatively secure: Don't you already do that? Would it resolve the issues if the wireless network sat outside the

    • I exchanged email with the CIO at Case Western, and he said they're using both VLANs to segregate traffic and packet shapers to prevent abuse. They've also certainly got a variety of other mechanisms in place to prevent this kind of nonsense.

      If you restrict inbound ports, filter traffic, shape packets, and don't offer services besides a pipe, you can certainly deal with anonymous community users.
    • At CWRU you have to register your MAC address for your wired network cards in order to get a IP address on the regular LAN. Otherwise you get an IP in a different range with limited access. With wireless, you are on a separate network and must VPN in to the regular campus network LAN.
    • Why not have the secure stuff use IPSec and QoS the routers? Let the open air have the excess. With QoS you can give priority to the IPSec tunneled packets and let both worlds live.

      As for viruses, anyone placing an unprotected machine like Microsoft Windows on the Internet live, well - is naive at best. It would not hurt the students to get a computer security lesson before they become managers.

      With IPSec on Wireless, you actually are likely more secure than a wired network as someone who plugs in a
  • by philStyle ( 591844 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @12:19PM (#6833230)
    At least as of now, when they say 'faculty, students, staff, and visitors to the campus', they really mean it. Presently, if you want to actually USE the wireless, you have got to VPN into the system. Until then, your computer will just recognize that there IS an access point, but you sure can't surf the net unless you've got an account with CWRU.
    So maybe this isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Until i hear that anyone with a laptop can actually use the access points without going and talking to the school for access, i'm a little skeptical. It's still sweet tho, 'specially if you live on campus.
    • This is exactly how I'm going to handle security on my upcoming wireless network. I have an AP and I'm putting a PC in my car. The AP currently goes right into my switch (for testing) but I'm going to point it at another interface on my linux gateway and block all non-VPN packets. I'll probably also look into running a transparent proxy on that interface so I can tell anyone who tries to access anything though it to screw off.

  • Hmmm... So CWRU plans to cover the whole city with a blanket wifi coverage? And it's going to be free? And it will be in Cleveland?

    Hmmm... Call me a skeptic, but I seem to remember when Apple said .mac would be free forever too. Plus, just thinking about the security issues involved with such a large scale rollout make my gut wrench (and it's a pretty big gut...)

    • Nope -- just University Circle [universitycircle.org]. It's less than ten square miles. Still -- mighty impressive, especially if they get places that are technically off-campus like bars and coffee shops. Hell, even some off-campus housing might be in range! The old "hippy street" there might be wi-fi accessible. Ironic, sitting outside on your balcony in your bare feet drinking herbal tea and writing an anti-capitalist screed, all the while hooked up via free wi-fi.

  • Gloat, gloat! (Score:2, Informative)

    by sidecut ( 126820 ) *
    How cool is that?! I live two miles from that campus, my alma mater.

    I often work from home on my company-provided laptop. It's been my dream to work from a Starbucks or, in the case of Case, the locally-owned, thirty-year-old Arabica coffee shop. Hell, there's even a bar on Case campus I could probably work from!

    NOTE: This is not at all an informative post. I'm just gloating. >:-)

  • by Cerlyn ( 202990 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @12:30PM (#6833293)

    It is interesting to see CWRU do this, as Ohio State [ohio-state.edu] likely would never dare try this. At Ohio State, all systems connected to the network must authenticate their users. If a system is unable to do so, the network switches typically force users onto a logon server in order to verify whom they are.

    This is a result of OSU's network policy [ohio-state.edu] (PDF file - see item #13). There are a few exceptions, but for the most part this is true.

    OSU's wireless 802.11 service [osuweb.net] requires users to login, and pay for some sort of dialup plan. Even the $1.95/month one counts.


  • This just arrived:
    From: "Bennett Sims" <b_sims_ux@po.cwru.edu>
    X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12a)
    Subject: Check it out!
    Eerie coincidence? I think not! :)
  • As a lifetime resident of Cincinnati, all I've got to say is:

    Don't you realize that some people could be looking at pornography on their laptops now???!!! And they might even be Democrats !!! Somebody oughta be arrested!!!

    :sighs:

    Yet another score for Cleveland in the ongoing struggle. Better bars, better bands, better baseball, better weather, and a significantly smaller proportion of troglodytes among the population. At least we've got race riots, and, uh... Larry Flynt. Though we're trying to put h

  • Instead of free wireless internet access for all, how about free weights for all? All this does is benefit fat asses house-sitting their computers outside. "Going outside to take a breath of fresh air" will mean sitting on one's ass outside all day.

    On one side, fat nerds will stay outside longer than before, but this time using their computer exclusively, instead of just talking a walk in the park. Good development? No.

    On the other hand, the rest of us will have to put up with the eyesore of these peopl
  • NOT free to public (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This service is not free to the public. You must have a CWRU (now officiall called Case) network ID to join the Cisco VPN.
  • Just for interest, how does CWRU handle this problem (preceding /. story [slashdot.org]. I presume that 1,200 staff, students, and random strangers constitutes quite a serious home-grown network...?

    I suspect a large part of the answer is to treat mobile users as "foreign" and put them all on an external segment of the network where they simply can't do much damage except possibly to each other.

    Does anyone have more information?
  • by Mhrmnhrm ( 263196 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @01:20PM (#6833656)
    ... for taking down the Cleveland FreeNet (CFN). The grand-daddy of all freenets, it was taken down something like 2 years ago this month, ostensibly because they couldn't continue to maintain the dialup banks, or some such rubbish. The CWRU cash fund is supposedly something in the billions (though this may just be heresay), and I can't imagine that CFN really sucked that many resources out. SO... while this is all fine and dandy for the CWRU students/faculty tromping around the museums, the rest of us Clevelanders remain in the lurch with no real community site anymore.
    • The CWRU cash fund is supposedly something in the billions (though this may just be heresay),

      No need for hearsay. They say so themselves [cwru.edu]. It was $1.5 billion in 2000.

    • While I feel your pain, CFN did have some serious issues, the biggest of which was the fact that the codebase was insecure, the least of which was the fact that staffing issues within ITS prevented it from being properly maintained.

      Besides, and I think you could agree, in the end it really became a pretty seedy place with more and more 1337 kiddies joining in that really had no business being there. A great influx of people that really didn't care about the "community" trashed many of the SIGs and caused
      • if you wouldn't mind greatly, i'd be interested in the new irc server... i miss oxo, ca, nightmeyr, raist, the picnics, and all the other fun stuff that used to be.

        And yeah, you're right... the install they had was more insecure than windows. but I can't believe that it was so badly written that turning it open-source and letting everyone else clean it up wasn't a realistic option (unless Tom Grudner had some sort of patent/license attached that prevented it). Ah well... lordulkesh cat yahoo daht commu
        • Contact me via my email address and I will reply with the appropriate information. The people you lsited I don't think hang out... the groups are now very different. However, there are a number of decent people on. It started a few years ago with just myself and two of my friends on campus who were all employees. Now the network (it's a collection of 3 servers, 2 on campus, 1 off) that, currently has about 50 people. Sometimes we hit a lot more, point being when Halder went around the PB Lewis building
    • University funds may be in the billions but that still doesn't mean that an institution can spend wildly on each and every project. Once principles start being eaten up instead of income from funds, the future of programs, departments and infrastructure can be endangered.

      The variety of expenses involved in running a university and the range of fluctuation of those costs means that budgets have to be conservative to guarantee that tuitions will only rise by modest amounts while services supplied remains cons

    • The CWRU cash fund is supposedly something in the billions (though this may just be heresay), and I can't imagine that CFN really sucked that many resources out. SO...

      That's the endowment (it passed the $1B mark in the mid- to late-90's when I was in grad school there).

      On the other hand, as anyone who's been to the school know, this has nothing to do with public access, nothing to do with student access, and everything to do with marking to prospective students. This is, after all, the university tha

  • I just want to reply to some of the people bashing Case as not caring about its students, spending money on name recognition, etc. While there may be some truth to these claims, they are being wildly exaggerated. I graduated from CWRU 3 years ago, and found my professors there to be extremely caring, and still maintain contact with them and ask them for advice. They have helped immensely with establishing my career path (I'm currently in grad school). There may still be a need for better teaching profes
    • Let's see, lied to by deans. Refusal to accept transfer credits because of "improperly filled out forms" (even when the transfer credits were taken on the advice of a dean AND that dean helped me fill out the forms). No chance of appeals because Dean Robinson "is the appeals board", and gives not a rats ass about students.

      Awesome school. Wasted three years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars out of my own pocket there just to be told sorry - you are going to have to lose over 50 credits from CSU
  • It's like the Cleveland Freenet is rising again.

    -ae506
  • ...would I be involved with this. CWRU better have a trunkful of lawyers and/or a Microsoft "We ain't responsible" EULA. We have an "open" network at my university, but you have to register your machine. Cloned MAC addrs are the only threat and if you are some little shit who sets a static IP, we have a nifty little script that pings IPs, and bans you on the router. As for security, there is none. Better used encrypted means. That is the user's problem.
  • by SirDaShadow ( 603846 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:26PM (#6834022)
    Does anyone remember back in the day when they used to give away free accounts? They weren't shell accounts, but you could do email, news and IRC. This was back in 1990, and basically that's how I got my feet wet on the internet. Good ol' times I reckon...
  • by sinnergy ( 4787 ) on Saturday August 30, 2003 @02:51PM (#6834171) Homepage
    I am not intimiately involved with the project, as I work in the EECS department at Case and not ITS. However, I do know a lot of people that *do* work within ITS and keep myself informed enough to know that most of what's being spouted here is inaccurate at the least and FUD at worst.

    In any case (no pun intended), here's what's going down.

    Case currently has deployed 600 at last count (a few months ago) Cisco WAPs with 802.11b. By the end of the project, almost 1200 WAPs will be deployed campus wide. When Cisco starts shipping the 802.11g radios for the Aironets, all of the radios in all of the APs are going to get upgraded to g.

    OK. That's done.

    Next, currently it is REQUIRED that anyone wanting to use the WAPs must authenticate to a Cisco VPN server and gain access to campus network services as if they were physically on the network. HOWEVER, starting September 1st, ANYONE will be able to use another SSID on any WAP to gain access to the network AS IF they were outside of the CWRU firewall. ANYONE. Script kiddies, goofballs, terrorists... your mother... anyone. Also with that, though, are some SERIOUS controls and, I would assume, monitoring of the traffic. The first big control is bandwidth throttling. No, you wouldn't be able to park (if you could find parking at least) outside of a building and snarf down kazaa bullshit (besides, Kazaa is mostly throttled for everyone anyway. P2P is such a waste of resources, but I digress). So don't think you're going to be able to pull down at 4 to 5 Mbps on the "guest" network. What you WILL be able to do is check mail, browse the web and do activity and most "normal" people would be able to do. If you want to do high bandwidth wireless applications, you'd have to use the VPN.

    So, while this is authoritative I believe I can speak with some certainty that what I have said above is correct and true.

    Also, I want to state that my words here are not necessarily the official views of my employer, Case Western Reserve University and are my own based upon publically published information.
  • Everyone knows that Nanyang Technological University [ntu.edu.sg] in Singapore is the world's largest [aceglobal.org] wireless network [ntu.edu.sg] campus in the world, even though it's beta noir, and long time rival, National University of Singapore [nus.edu.sg] has implemented a wireless network [nus.edu.sg] waaay before those crummers even thought heard about 802.11b. :-)
  • so that's why our tuition shot up to $24,000 a year.. so that Case (formerly CWRU) could make the slashdot headlines. (estimated cost of attendance is ~$34,000 btw)

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