A new wireless system was recently installed in Pralle-Sodaro, Henley, and Glass halls, from German electrical engineering company Siemens. According to Ferguson, it is a huge improvement over the previous wireless system, and it will eventually be installed all over the campus.

“Once it’s installed everywhere, a student with an open laptop could conceivably walk from the dorms all the way to Memorial Hall without ever dropping the wireless connection,” said Ferguson.

Yes, even through the parking lots.

IS&T will be working closely with Campus Facilities to make sure all of the new buildings, starting with the new dorm that will replace Braden, will be built with the campus’ wireless system in mind.

Another improvement will be the new type of security system that will be implemented next year. Many students may groan at thought of the return of a system in any way similar to Cisco Clean Access Agent, which was well known among the student body for simply keeping its users locked out of the network and being problematic.

But the new system, called Bradfurd Campus Manager, should be easy to use, according to IS&T.

“One of the problems with Clean Access was that it routed everybody – registered students, as well as unregistered users – through the network. With Bradfurd, students only have to log in the first time, and it will occasionally verify to make sure the system is clean, but you won’t have to log back in,” Ferguson said.

As the system stands now, it is unsecured, and IS&T says this is definitely a bad thing. Cisco was turned off last year, and won’t be returning, but until a new system is implemented, anybody can log on to the Chapman network. At the moment, nothing is encrypted, leaving only a few systems in the network to protect from possible attacks.

“We’re a bit worried about security (in the dorms) because anybody can get on this semester,” he said.