Dartmouth students who own laptops are now able to access the World Wide Web, search the Online Library and check their BlitzMail accounts via a wireless Ethernet connection, according to Kiewit Computing Services.
To pick up the Ethernet signal, students need to have internal attachments for iBook computers, which are available at Kiewit for $89. If they own other laptop models, they need to buy roughly $170 Personal Computer cards through other sales outlets.
When combined with the software that comes with them, the PC cards pick up the Ethernet signals once inserted into a laptop.
Although few students who wish to access the wireless Ethernet currently own the appropriate technology, they soon will be able to borrow PC cards -- which are compatible with laptops other than the iBook -- from Baker Reserves, according to Director of Technical Services Punch Taylor.
"I suspect that sometime in February they'll be available," he said. "I'm thinking of about five or six cards."
For the time being, Baker Reserves is the only site that will loan the cards.
"They're the only place that we're thinking about right now. They have the mechanisms set up to administer loans," Taylor explained.
Access points were recently installed in Baker Tower, Baker Reserve Corridor, Cook Auditorium, the Great Hall in the Thayer School, the first floors of Kiewit and the Collis Student Center, all of Sudikoff and part of the Green. The access points, which broadcast Ethernet signals, will allow approximately 25 computers to log into the Dartmouth network within one area.
"Eventually, we'd like the entire campus to be wired," Director of Computing Services Larry Levine told The Dartmouth late last year. "It's very underwhelming. It's easy to install and easy to use."
According to Taylor, the decision to offer the wireless service coincided with a drop in its market price.
"The technology really just became affordable and more reliable," he said.
Indeed, the service is becoming increasingly widespread, with Princeton and Carnegie Mellon Universities employing limited wireless programs.
Wireless access speed is compatible with that of a standard connection. But as with cellular phones, the wireless connection can be disturbed by moving objects outside or the number of users in the vicinity of an access point.
Taylor said that a wireless system does come with certain drawbacks.
"Right now ," he said, "there's no control on access, so anyone in the world can walk into Baker Reserves and use our access and hack."
To counter such problems, wireless systems need to be augmented with authentication and inscription technologies.
"That should be out in February and we would move over to authenticated and inscripted wireless once it becomes available," Levine said.
