New Student Edition 2006 - The Michigan Daily - 15C TECHNOLOGY LSA buildings lag behind in campus wireless coverage By Michael Kan Daily Staff Reporter Something's missing in most of LSA freshman Lauren Boumaroun's classrooms. That something - wireless Internet - is preventing her from obtaining notes during lectures. "Many classrooms and lecture halls are limited in wireless access," Boumaroun said. "And sometimes it's nice to be able to access the Internet during class to get lecture notes and such." Like many students on campus, Boumaroun carries a laptop equipped to receive wireless Internet access. From the Business and Law Schools to North Cam- pus, the University has covered the interiors of many of its buildings with wi-fi hotspots. The hot spots are less common in LSA buildings. Although wireless coverage is slowly expanding, budget cuts and the size of LSA's footprint on campus have hindered the school on its path to achieve com- plete wireless internet access over its buildings. HOW WIRELESS ARE WE? Both Intel and the Princeton Review conduct annu- al surveys to rate which colleges in the nation are the most wireless. On both surveys, the University is unranked. Despite the lack of complete coverage, University administrators hail the progress that has been made on the wireless front. They say the colleges with the greatest need for the technology can access wireless Internet anywhere in their buildings. Aside from dorms and outdoor areas, wireless Internet covered only about 58 percent of the major buildings on campus as of last summer. Some information technology administrators esti- mate wireless Internet will span the entire campus by 2008 or 2009. In the Business, Law and Engineering schools, widespread wireless development began in 2000. In LSA, the University began deploying wireless networks in its buildings a little more than a year ago. The discrepancy in coverage stems from each school having the autonomy to develop its networks as it sees fit, said Andrew Palms, the University's direc- tor of information technology. "Wireless follows the same model as any other financial expenditure of the University," Palms said. With no central initiative to dictate deployment, it's up to each school to determine what role wireless Internet will take for them. For the Business School, which installed one of the first wireless networks at the University in 1997, equipping its buildings with wireless Internet was an early priority. Ed Adams, chief technology officer at the Busi- ness School, said as the curriculum began encourag- ing students to use laptops during classes, the school's administrators pushed for the expansion of wireless Internet. "Because we have very old facilities, wired jacks weren't feasible," Adams said. "Wireless was just a good fit." At a cost of about $60,000, the Business School has installed all their buildings with coverage. Other schools have done the same, seizing the need for wire- less Internet access early on. LSA decided to wait. LSA'S PATH TO WIRELESS LSA's wireless strategy hinged on deploying the technology once it matured to the point that it could be installed on a wider scale for a cheaper price, said Michael McPherson, special counselor to the Univer- sity provost. . McPherson, the former director of information technology for LSA, said once the demand for the technology became apparent in 2004, administrators decided to begin deploying a network in their school's buildings. But with the declining state budget funds, McPher- son said LSA's wireless development "has gotten cut, just like everything else." "Whether you think that's a problem or not depends if you think it's a high priority to have a wireless net- work on campus," he said. After spending $175,000 to install wireless Inter- net, LSA still has a long way to go in its bid to outfit the largest school on campus with the technology. "In LSA, there is more of a conservative approach just because of the sheer size," said Ron Loveless, senior manager for LSA information technology. "Due to competing projects for limited funds we cannot place (wireless) into all LSA buildings, class- rooms and grounds space between the buildings at one time," he added. "The cost to do so would be in the millions of dollars." Each wireless Internet router costs about $1,000 to $1,200 - far more expensive than the wireless routers available for homes. But more users can connect to it and its signals span farther. Loveless said LSA has been installing wireless networks incrementally in the commons and meet- ing areas in the buildings that students frequent. This year, LSA plans to deploy a wireless network in the Undergraduate Science Building, the reno- vated LSA building and possibly even the Denni- son Building. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE "In the ideal world with unlimited funding, I would put wireless across all of LSA," Loveless said. "At the Business School and some of the other schools they have it all across. But we just have pockets of it." LSA sophomore Jim Schreiber said that while the pace of wireless development has been slow, students need to realize the difficulties in deploying a wireless network effectively. Schreiber, who is part of a committee of faculty members and administrators that makes recommen- dation on technology to LSA, said the costs of rapidly deploying wireless across all LSA buildings would be "astronomical." "There is a list of things that we can spend money on. Would the students benefit the most from this?" - This article originally ran on Feb. 7, 2006 as the frst part of a three-part series.