If bandwidth is a concern, the addition of public wi-fi can help justify upgrades. The relative cost of increased bandwidth is hard to understand in the abstract, but if you can get buy-in from communications, education, etc., the actual cost is pretty easy to swallow.
I provide public wi-fi at our Memorial (a three acre outdoor setting). The initial order was simply to provide data service for guide staff, but I got lots of additional support once I suggested using a captive portal on public wi-fi to communicate about our mission and activities. The portal page also includes a link to make free-will donations, both for our general operations and to defray the costs of providing the service. In addition, the extra utility allowed us to sign on with a service that can be throttled up if necessary. That's made it possible to webcast certain events directly on our own, saving us content distribution costs that previously made webcasting difficult. Dave Salovesh Information Technology Manager National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Christina DePaolo Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2010 1:09 PM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: Re: [MCN-L] Reasons for providing public wi-fi Hi, For those of you who offer public wi-fi, do mind sharing how you made it happen? What were the barriers you had to address? Visitors are asking for free wi-fi at SAM but our IT department is holding back because of resource issues, I think it has to do with bandwidth.
