All, I'm polling the list about an idea that I would like to test in our dormatories. If anyone has done a similar project out there, would you mind sharing your experience.
Our dormatories have one port per pillow (10/100), and no wireless except in a few lobbies. As of today, it is a private wireless jungle since many students are bringing their own APs. 3 solutions seem to emerge: -let the jungle be (security risks) -control the jungle by enforcing compliant configurations for private APs (support nightmare) -provide "free" wireless from the University (cost) A significant portion of the cost of installing a WLAN is the switch port, the circuit installation and the power over ethernet port. Well, one could bypass a bunch of these costs (switch port, circuit, PoE and reduce the AP cost) by deploying Linksys WRT54GL (the key being the built-in switch!) and load an OPENWRT code version which provides VLAN/SSID with 802.1x and even Mesh. We would connect the WRT54GL in the existing port in the room and use a regular AC port in the room for power. If necessary a $5 power strip could be considered! To replace the borrowed port we would allow the student to connect to the 4 ports switch built-in the WRT54GL. Those units would be SNMP monitored, and we could even consider an inexpensive enclosure as well. The savings would be considerable (from $300,000 with an enterprise solution to about $60,000 with a Linksys solution. What could go wrong with this plan. -Shelve life (those units will be in air conditioned bedrooms not overheated drop ceilings) -Theft (at $70 MSRP per unit, even 50 units per year wouldn't be a big deal!) -Reliability (anyone out there has tested this?) -Management (we have our own management solution that can easily take care of any style of AP) -Abuse (disconnection of the AC or Cat5) -Unreliable OPENWRT code -Lack of support (with the savings we could hire a dedicated coder and contribute to the opensource initiative ;-) This sounds somehow too easy. What's the catch? Thank you in advance for your input, (no sales please!) Philippe Hanset University of Tennessee ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
