Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

A newsletter for faculty, staff and students

March-April 2005 • Vol. 31, No. 2

University of Arkansas Implements First-of-Kind Wireless Network

By Laura H. Jacobs, UA manager of development communications

The University of Arkansas has established a first-of-its-kind wireless computer network on campus.

The network, informally dubbed the Greenspace Network, allows those with authenticated user identifications (students, faculty and staff), to access the Internet through portable laptops and hand-held data devices on campus. The University of Arkansas is the first entity in the United States to have deployed Nortel's new wireless mesh technology equipment, which creates the wireless network.

Bob Zimmerman, director for computing services said: "Faculty, staff and particularly students have very high expectations for their computing needs so it's critical that we work toward maintaining the most current technology environment possible to remain nationally competitive as an institution."

Craig Brown, associate director for computing services said: "We were interested in expanding our current wireless network for use by students, faculty and staff. Due to limitations on where we have a hard wired infrastructure to support a conventional wireless network, a wireless mesh network seemed to be an approach that would solve a number of our challenges in building a network around those constraints. The design of this network is intended to be nearly self configuring when deploying or expanding a wireless network and the mesh architecture provided a self healing network in the event portions of the mesh fail.

"We decided to concentrate on expanding the wireless mesh network - we're calling it our Greenspace Network - to those outdoor areas the campus has built to accommodate people being outside. We've covered all of the areas where we have benches or picnic tables on the main part of our campus," Brown said.

Wireless services have become increasingly necessary for conferences, cyber cafes, work areas, lab environments and mobility between classrooms. The University of Arkansas Police Department, for example, uses wireless technology to access information while on patrol directly from laptop computers inside squad cars.

The outdoor network uses wireless links to connect access points installed inside or outside to provide secure, seamless access to wireless broadband services. This solution allows enterprises and service providers to install wireless local area networks (WLAN) in areas where it is difficult or cost prohibitive to run cables. This innovative approach can drastically reduce the complexity and cost of deploying a traditional wireless LAN. The Wireless Mesh Network for the University of Arkansas includes Nortel's Wireless Access Point 7220 and Wireless Gateway 7250.

For related links and a map of the wireless access points visit: http://compserv.uark.edu/networking/publicaccess/wireless/index_3263_ENG_HTML.htm