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The answer came in the spring of 2001, and it came almost
unheralded, as if the residents of a small city woke up one morning to find
their aging public transit system suddenly gone anti-gravity: The subway system
was still there and you could ride it station-to-station, but why would you
when you could instantly teleport yourself from any corner to any building, or
vice versa. Dartmouth's third computing wave had arrived: The entire campus had
gone wireless.
 Now, any Dartmouth user with a laptop computer and a wireless
card could get high-speed Internet access anywhere on campus, in any building,
even outside — without having to plug into a network port. Anyone could read
e-mail from the porch of the Hanover Inn, the sundeck of the Skiway, or in
between Frisbee tosses on the Green. No other Ivy League school had anything
like it. Nor, in fact, did many institutions, public or private; most had a
"hot spot" or just a few buildings with wireless access points.
Dartmouth suddenly had 300 Cisco Aironets covering the entire 200 acres
(coverage that was complete, but subject to localized overload; it now has more
than 600 access points and another 400 coming). This new technology was adopted
so quickly that last October 57 colleges and universities sent their best
information technology people to Dartmouth to attend an "Unleashed" conference
to learn more about it. With keynote addresses by President James Wright and
former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, the conference was both a hands-on
demonstration of the network and a clear signal to all in attendance that
Dartmouth had again stepped to the front.
Or had it? Some conference attendees weren't yet ready to commit to the
expense. No doubt, Dartmouth's wireless network is a great new feature, they
said, but is it one that actually has educational benefits? Or is it something
less, a new-techway for students to send e-mail while walking between classes
or to order pizza from a fraternity parking lot?
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