[WEB4LIB] Re: More on Wireless Librarian

[Grace Agnew]

Heidi,

Actually, unless you implement some level of encryption and, secured
access, optimally a  digital certification process to enable wireless
logon, wireless itself is inherently insecure.  The wireless radio
frequency space is open to all comers and people with wireless laptops
often find themselves inadvertently "on" somebody else's wireless network
when they come within range of a wireless access point.  Enabling wireless
WANs is not difficult, except for the annoying problem of dead zones caused
by interference particularly water, structures that hold a lot of water,
such as trees, etc.).  The other issue is the need to "hand off"
connectivity from one access point to another without dropping the
connection.  However, these are fairly easily managed with some planning
and strategic positioning of access points.  I also don't think you
necessarily want someone connected between the university and the public
library since these would be different networks. The expense to create
persistent access which goes beyond access points within buildings to radio
towers similar to those in place for cellular phone service, more than
outweighs the dubious benefit of staying connected to the university net in
your car, anyway (IMO--at least in Atlanta, where we don't need any
additional driving distractions!). You simply want the technical ability to
log on to each network, which is not technically difficult.  The real issue
will be to develop a wireless network management system to provide secured
access to each network.  At Georgia Tech, the library is participating in a
secured wireless corridor (actually part of a larger "information anytime,
anywhere" project, involving walk-up ports for laptop access as well as
wireless laptop access).  The LAWN network, hosted and developed by the GT
Office of Information Technology, provides secure access (currently a
password account but migrating to a digital certificate program) to network
facilities.  We have walkup port support at the library now and have added
more than 200 walkup ports for independent laptop acess to both the campus
net and the library's subnet.   GT is participating with some other
institutions--MIT is one of them, I know, in developing this secured open
port access, which encompasses wireless but also walkup ports to the network.

For wireless, our access points at the library are installed, we just
picked up our wireless antennae yesterday and we will be offering wireless
access to our users sometime this semester.  We're not sure how we are
going to offer this wireless access.  We originally had thought we would be
receiving only five antennae so we envisioned using them for system
troubleshooting and reference service support.  Prices came down so
significantly on the Lucent antennae however, that we received 20, so we
probably need to rethink our decision not to check them out to users.  The
departments on campus already offering wireless have noted that there can
be installation issues for some laptops--particularly  conflicts between
the PCMCIA card and the wireless antenna, which may require one device to
be disabled before the other device can access the network.  Installation
is not completely straightforward right now for different laptop models,
because wireless is still fairly new so standards support isn''t robust for
interoperability. 

The GT wireless committee will be maintaining a private support website
where we can post installation problems as well as procedures for different
laptop models, currently just for sharing within our beta implementors
group.  Most of the departments on the committee have said that it will be
up to the individual user to make their antennae and laptops work with the
access points.  (Of course, most of the other beta tester departments are
highly technical--College of Computing, Engineering, etc. and have a known
user base.)  At the library, we are provisionally saying that we will offer
up to one half hour of support assisting users will driver download, etc.
but that we will not physically install their antennae or physically work
on privately-owned laptops because we do not want liability if a laptop is
inadvertently damaged.  We do intend to do some testing with our antennae,
identifying dead zones in the library.  We are  also hoping to set up some
wireless PCs in library areas where we could not cable due to ceiling
asbestos, to provide distributed network access, particularly in study
areas, for students without laptops.  We are unfortunately in the midst of
an ILS migration which is slowing this project down somewhat, but I will
keep web4lib informed of our progress.  

 The wireless committee is adding a level of encryption to the LAWN network
 to reduce the risk of "inadvertent wireless drop-ins" to the network.  So,
the technology to wander from academic to public library is not just
do-able, it's inherent in the system.  The real issue is administration to
secure your assets, such as commercial databases and to safeguard user
privacy on the network.


Grace Agnew



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Grace Agnew
Assistant Director for Systems and Technical Services
Georgia Tech Library
(404) 894-8932
(404) 894-6084 (fax)
mailto:grace.agnew at library.gatech.edu

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