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Wireless deployed: Spring 2001, first in the Ivy
League.
Campus coverage: 100 percent.
Acres covered: Two hundred and five; about one square mile
(plus a few off-campus sites, including an office building in Lebanon, NH, and
the Skiway Lodge in Lyme, NH).
Access points: 1,400
Equipment: Aruba Networks 802.11 a/b/g access points.
Thirteen main wireless controllers are distributed throughout campus.
They control the operation of the access points.
IP Communicator: Starting with fall term 2003, Dartmouth
introduced IP Communicator (previously called "softphones") to incoming
freshmen in a phased-in rollout. As of October 31, 200 students had adopted the
service. The rollout has garnered national attention in the industry. An
article that captured the spirit can be found at http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/columns/article.php/3084501.
Student body: About 5,700 undergraduate and graduate
students.
Faculty and staff: About 1,900.
Wireless network users: About 7,000 connections a day; the
busiest time is late afternoon.
First Year students: In the fall of 2002, 88 percent of the
incoming Class of 2006 chose laptops. In the fall of 2003, 98 percent of the
incoming Class of 2007 chose laptops. Since the fall of 2004, laptops have been
the standard issue for First Year undergraduates. All laptops issued since
the fall of 2002 have had built-in wireless capability.
Classroom use: Integrating wireless technology into
teaching is gaining momentum at the undergraduate level and at the graduate
schools of engineering, medicine, and business. A couple of examples are the
use of wireless PDAs in a Psychological and Brain Sciences class to provoke
discussion by asking students to anonymously answer questions throughout the
lecture via the handheld device, and a Thayer School of Engineering program
that sends information, such as homework updates or lecture outlines, to a
student’s wireless laptop, depending on the student’s location.
Research initiatives: Several research projects around
campus utilize and analyze the wireless environment, and most projects involve
students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. One important study
focused on the wireless network itself, examining how and when it is used by
our community. (Research results are available at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~campus/.)
Another research project involves sensor networks, which can help direct an
object like a soldier or a robot through a dangerous region. The network senses
changes in the environment and guides the object around unsafe areas. Dartmouth
also pursues network and Internet security primarily through its Institute for
Security Technology Studies, a national center for cyber security research,
development, and assessment. A complete list of projects can be found at http://cmc.cs.dartmouth.edu/projects/ and http://www.ists.dartmouth.edu.
Wired network: Seven hundred twenty-five "10/100" Cisco
3550 and 3560 switches and seven core 650X routers in a meshed topology to
insure maximum uptime. In the spring of 2003, Dartmouth completed its network
upgrade enabling "convergence," the technology allowing Cable TV, voice, and
data to travel through one line. With convergence has come the use of
Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and "softphones." Software phones allow
telephone calls to be placed and received over the wired and wireless network
from laptop and handheld computers. The network is capable of 10/100/1000 to
the desktop and a migration path to 10 gigabytes in the core.
Campus data ports (wired network): Approximately
23,500.
Commodity and Internet access: Dartmouth currently has 255
megabytes to the commodity Internet, and 155 megabytes to Internet2
through the NoX I II access point for research initiatives.
Video over IP: DarTV — a service that delivers
broadcast television over Dartmouth's data network — has been rolled out
to users on the wired network. All 62 channels are available to 802.11a-enabled
wired locations. Of the 62 channels, 10 are international broadcasts, and the
content of two of the channels is programmed by undergraduates.
Please note that Dartmouth's wireless network is measured and monitored for
research purposes, with careful provision for the privacy of its
users. This research study has been approved by CPHS (study #17325).
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