Alumni grant funds wireless Internet experiment

Everyone who has ever lounged on a bench on the Cross Campus lawn and yearned to check e-mail may soon see his wish granted, no strings attached.

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A donation by Norman Selby, TD '74, and Melissa Vail, MC '74, will help fund a pilot program for wireless Internet service in two residential colleges and other so-called "hubs" on campus, Director of Academic Media and Technology Philip Long said. The two alumni made the donation to keep undergraduates at the cutting edge of technology, and Information Technology Services (ITS) and the donors settled on wireless Internet access as the project that would be most exciting for and most beneficial to student life.

The two colleges selected for the experiment, Calhoun and Berkeley, were chosen because of their proximity to CCL—another planned hub for wireless Internet—in an effort to create a tight concentration of wireless access.

Traditional wired technology requires students to plug Ethernet cables into hubs or wall jacks. The new wireless technology, though, will utilize "access points" that talk to wireless Ethernet cards, which the Yale Adminstration will purchase and lend to students. The students participating in the pilot program will borrow the cards with the understanding that ITS will track and study the extent of their wireless Internet use over several months. This data, and an additional survey, will help determine how well the technology is serving student needs and where access points are most needed.

The access points are black boxes no bigger than a laptop computer, and Internet access on a nearby unwired laptop is as fast as any desktop's service. The wireless technology operates at 11 megabits per second, even faster than the 10- megabit service that wired computers on campus receive.

Long said the wireless technology's most effective and welcome use will be as a part of student life, not as a classroom aid. "We want to bring the network to student activities," Long said. "If students want to study together in the dining hall or check e-mail in CCL or in their college courtyards without dragging around Ethernet cords—well, they can."

As Long mentioned, ITS plans to experiment with wireless service in CCL, probably in the Machine City area. In addition to CCL, wireless Internet capabilities will be added to the computer science and engineering buildings. Those departments may choose to experiment with technology in the classroom at the discretion of the professors.

The first antennae will go up in a week, and by the end of January, Calhoun and Berkeley common areas should be wired. The college courtyards should be completed by February, and ITS's goal is to have all the components in place by March. If the pilot program is successful, ITS may equip the entire campus with access points by next year, at a total potential cost of around $500,000.

One of the goals of the pilot period is to determine how the wireless Internet technology will respond to present problems. Although the antennae transmit radio waves, they are broadcast on the 2.4 GHz spectrum and are much less powerful than the radio waves to which most people are accustomed. The strength of the wireless connection will fade and eventually disappear with distance from the access point, as Long demonstrated by walking down the hall from the access point in his office. The stress of hundreds of users may also slow or interrupt Internet service. In addition, the waves are absorbed by certain materials, particularly concrete, metal, paper, and water. This absorption will present a challenge for wireless service in the library, for example, which is composed primarily of those four elements.

Wireless Internet is at the cutting edge of technology in today's markets, and Dell, Gateway, Apple, and other computer companies have begun to sell laptop computers with built-in wireless Ethernet cards. Students who purchase a wireless card or who come with pre-equipped laptop computers will have the same access to the service as the students in the pilot colleges. Long said that by providing the infrastructure for the wireless technology, ITS will likely encourage students to bring laptop computers to Yale.

"But will wireless Internet replace old Internet cords? The answer is no, not yet," Long said. "Because of certain issues of security, Ethernet cords are certainly still the best way for desktop computers. For student life, though, I think this new technology is perfect."

Long said that exciting as the technology may be, the pilot program is meant to be a benefit to students, not an experiment for its own sake. "It's important that we focus on what it's going to accomplish," Long said. "We see this as an area of potential. We're playing, but also learning. We really do want to see a partnership between students and technology."

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