Excellence in Networking 2004 Award Winner

Dartmouth College

Wireless Campus Overlay

Over the course of six months in the winter of 2001-02, Dartmouth College created a robust, comprehensive 802.11b wireless overlay to the college's existing wired switched fast-Ethernet infrastructure. The project encompassed all campus buildings, outdoor spaces, major auxiliary operations, and selected adjacent residential areas, and involved collaborations among senior academic leadership, key faculty, the alumni advisory group, and the central IT group. The result is a 100-percent wireless environment that supports teaching/learning, research, and daily life and that has pushed all Dartmouth constituents into new modes of activity, thinking, and entrepreneurship: the original technical innovation has provided the matrix for a wealth of spin-off activities.

Among many noteworthy features of this effort:

• The network infrastructure is embedded into the college budget process, so the upgrade process is a sustainable activity.
• Network tech support staff carry Pocket PCs and are always accessible, which has increased productivity by more than 60 percent and halved service-call time.
• The college is discontinuing its legacy phone switch for a more cost-effective VoIP solution, and is moving to reliable portable telephony that integrates with existing desktop telephony.
• Students can change their daily schedules on the fly, as they walk across campus.
• Laptops are becoming the home environment for many faculty members, enabling them to interweave a wide variety of resources into classroom presentations and work with familiar technology whether at home, office, or classroom.
• Student research is greatly enhanced with the library's online resources always accessible: the Student Center for Research, Writing, and Information Technology supports more ambitious academic projects.

Dartmouth's wireless network was one of the earliest such deployments and is larger than many corporate installations. The open network environment, which might not meet security requirements in some organizations, was a deliberate decision to give priority to ease of use for end-users; it also allowed technical staff to move quickly with actual physical deployment. The college considers this environment to be a test bed, supporting a wealth of unanticipated benefits and experiments. It has helped foster an overall positive attitude toward computing in general among users, and has helped the central IT group's image with senior leadership. Ongoing progress includes upgrades in the summer of 2004 to increase speed and manageability, and enhanced focus on research/scientific uses as well as support for video.