Municipal WLAN plans draw mixed reactions

A public political spat in Pennsylvania last week threw light on potential issues that might stymie citywide wireless LANs intended to give residents and businesses broadband Internet access.

Such networks are pitting cities such as Philadelphia that want to build their own Wi-Fi networks against carriers such as Verizon. Carriers, which fear losing customers and influence, are lobbying hard for laws that will block cities and towns from building such networks.

It's an issue that has network professionals trying to gauge what effect new Wi-Fi networks could have on their organizations.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

A public political spat in Pennsylvania last week threw light on potential issues that might stymie citywide wireless LANs intended to give residents and businesses broadband Internet access.

Such networks are pitting cities such as Philadelphia that want to build their own Wi-Fi networks against carriers such as Verizon. Carriers, which fear losing customers and influence, are lobbying hard for laws that will block cities and towns from building such networks.

It's an issue that has network professionals trying to gauge what effect new Wi-Fi networks could have on their organizations.

"This [kind of network] would be of significant value to our [legal] advocates that do outreach work around the city at community sites and people's homes," says John Greiner, CTO for Legal Services of New York City. "If we had pervasive WLANs across the five boroughs, we could much more cost effectively mobilize our staff."

Greiner says the organization has been experimenting with cellular data services but he finds them too slow, too pricey, with spotty coverage. All these limitations potentially could be overcome with a city WLAN.

"My bet would be that pervasive WLAN will culture all sorts of innovative technology, applications and economic development, similar to the Internet," he says.

The organization's corporate network probably wouldn't change much, he says, unless the city WLAN was able to offer business-class service-level agreements and QoS.

Northern Illinois University has its own WLAN, and so far the neighboring city of DeKalb doesn't have plans for a citywide network. But Walter Czerniak, the school's assistant vice president for IT, says, "A city network would provide access for our students who live off-campus. In that light, we would support [such a net] in any way we could."

But potential problems include unpredictable performance based on user densities, unsolvable interference issues in the increasingly crowded 2.4-GHz band and a greater vulnerability of WLAN users to viruses or other attacks, which then could leak into corporate networks when employees log on.

"802.11b/g/a all ride over unlicensed spectrum, with no rules on what happens when you create channel interference for neighboring access points," says John Halamka, CIO of CareGroup Healthcare Systems in Boston. "As long as your [access point] power settings are within FCC guidelines, it's a Wild West show. There will be plenty of opportunity for interference."

Outdoor radios from vendors such as Strix Systems use power levels from 100 to 800 milliwatts, two to 16 times as much as is used by indoor WLAN access points.