Management software eases WLAN access: new tool aids the rapid growth of wireless computing at Maryland university

Communications News, April, 2004 by David Hunting

Located in the busy high-tech corridor between Baltimore and Washington, the 1,500-acre University of Maryland College Park campus is rapidly building out campus-wide Wi-Fi coverage to accommodate popular demand for wireless connectivity.

"The big advantage we see for wireless over wired is ease of access," says Jim Zahniser, director of IT for the C[ark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland College Park. "Students can open up their laptop anywhere and go online without having to find a network jack. The engineering school has added full wireless coverage to six of its buildings within the last two years.

The engineering school is now in the process of adding a new building. "Originally, we were going to run wired connections to every classroom desktop," says Zahniser. "With the advent of wireless, that doesn't make sense anymore. Instead, we'll make sure we have enough access points to provide coverage."

Wireless access is especially important to a large population of non-resident faculty, staff and commuting students. "People move around a lot here," says Leah Goldman, University of Maryland College Park student and senior network engineer. Goldman is responsible for the design and deployment of the wireless network infrastructure throughout the campus. "You may not have an office or a phone or a place to sit, but now you can go pretty much anywhere on campus and have access to the network."

Wireless access is currently available throughout 38 classroom buildings on campus thanks to a wireless initiative dubbed Mobile at Maryland that is now more than three years old. More than 245 Wi-Fi access points have been installed at University of Maryland College Park, with that number set to nearly double by the end of the year. The ultimate goal is full Wi-Fi coverage of the sprawling urban campus, with an estimated total of 1,800 access points.

That is a lot of new network infrastructure to manage, and the university quickly realized it needed new tools for the task. "We knew we needed a management solution for our wireless LAN," says Goldman. "Early on, we discovered that logging into each access point via the Web was a real pain. You could see them all, but you would have to log in to each one individually to configure them."

Over the course of the wireless initiative, the university has installed several generations of Cisco access points--350s, 1100s and 1200s. "Cisco recommended Wavelink," says Goldman of the university's search for a management solution for the wireless network. "With Wavelink's Mobile Manager, given the IP address of each access point, everything can be done automatically for you. It probably saves about 30 minutes per access point."

Over time, the software--installed on a central server--has become an increasingly important tool for administering and maintaining the network. Goldman has used Mobile Manager to set up different profiles for different buildings. "It does autodiscovery to give you an all-over view of what you have, and, from the administrator interface, you can go directly to the Web interface for an individual access point."

"Centralized management has made my day-to-day administrative job much easier," says Goldman. "Before, our management tools would just ping the interfaces to see what was on or off. When we saw a problem, we had to schlep out to the access point with our gear to see what was wrong. Now, if something happens to an access point, we can see it at the central console and do some trouble-shooting to find out what kind of error we're getting. Frequently, we can reset the access point from there to solve the problem. It's a lot faster.

"When we need to do a firmware update, we can blast one update off to a whole group of access points," Goldman continues. "If we want to make a change to one of two parameters, we create a single profile, assign it to a group of access points and the software makes all the changes for us automatically."

Goldman says there have been some problems with interference and rogue access points on the wireless network. The university can use Mobile Manager to detect rogue access points. When they are discovered, the corresponding network ports are disabled.

For security, users must register the MAC address of their laptop of PDA to gain access to the network. If someone attempts to log on with an unknown MAC address, they are redirected to a registration server. Further, the university offers a VPN client to users who want greater security.

"At least 50% of our MBA students are using wireless technology today," estimates David Cantor, currently studying for his doctorate at the R.H. Smith School of Business. Cantor is also an IT project manager for the University of Maryland College Park-Smith Business School.

Cantor already can set a return for the university on its investment in wireless infrastructure. "More students already have laptop computers," he says. "Configuring those laptops for wireless activity can be done for under $100 per device. Many laptops now come with wireless built in. This encourages students to purchase their own laptops so the university does not have to provide more computer labs. It shifts some of the cost to the students without mandating it.