March 2004 — Applications
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Wi-Fi Keeps Mobile Classrooms Connected in North Carolina's Largest District
Many schools in the district also extend the flexibility of their computing resources with wireless mobile computer carts, better know as COWs (computers on wheels). Those wireless carts get a lot of use since each cart has 18 laptops and a wireless access point. They are used to set up a computer lab pretty much wherever one is needed in the district. A classroom that may have only one or two hardwired workstations can plug the access point from that cart into an Ethernet jack on the wall and provide computers for 18 more students. Some schools in the district have as many as 10 of these carts in use during the school year, with about a thousand wireless laptops and desktops in use throughout the entire school district last year; the numbers continue to grow.
Providing Essential Control
I leave Mobile Manager up on my workstation so that I have a quick visual check of how our district's network is doing. The control panel will tell me when an access point g'es down and where it's down, which is important since I use Mobile Manager's control panel to organize the district's wireless workload. In addition, each school has its own folder with all the associated access points. Mobile Manager has helped me troubleshoot some pesky WAN problems as well. The e-mail notification feature in Mobile Manager has been very helpful, because it lets us know when any of the WAN connection links are down. For example, I get an e-mail when we lose connectivity to several access points, which helps us uncover troublesome intermittent problems.
The WLAN implementation at CMS demonstrates how Wi-Fi access points and management software can help school districts extend computing resources to facilities that cannot be served by wire-based technologies due to mobility, building age, cost and other factors. Wi-Fi networks are an ideal solution for schools because of how flexible the technology is, and how cost-effective it is in terms of hard costs and support resources necessary to maintain the network.
- Duane Alles
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