Otterbein’s Information and Technology Services Department plans to expand the university’s wireless network.
The network will be expanded to the outdoors around campus and there are further plans to provide a wireless corridor for internet connections from Uptown Westerville to Cleveland Avenue. Completion of this project is anticipated to take about 3 to 5 years.
The wireless project would be a collaboration with the city of Westerville, as both the city and the university would expand their own existing networks and share them. Specifically, Westerville would expand the network in the Uptown area.
Westerville is looking to expand an outdoor wireless network from Park Street to Home Street in order to have wireless connection for the Fourth Friday events.
This new expansion would provide students with the ability to be in Uptown Westerville or other parts of the Otterbein campus, and still have a connection to the Otterbein network.
The ITS Department’s vision is to have an outdoor wireless network so that students can use their laptops, tablets and smartphones wherever they are on campus.
Currently, Otterbein has about 380 indoor wireless access points, but does not have any outdoor wireless access points.
The new outdoor network would be just like the Otterbein network that students already have access to, by using their name and student ID number to log in.
The network would remain secure and students who were logged on would be protected by the Otterbein firewall.
This new network would function just as if students were working in an academic building on campus.
Otterbein ITS and the city of Westerville are now in the planning stages of the project, but neither have approved a budget for this expansion.
The current plan is to do a test run of the plan, also known as a “proof of concept,” over the summer with the city of Westerville using a few access points. This is to test how this plan would work, according to Dave Bender, interim executive director for ITS at Otterbein.
The proof of concept will cost about $3,000 and each wireless access point will cost about $700, covering a radius of 250 feet. The system allows for up to 200 wireless connections per access point.
If the proof of concept is successful, the ITS Department will request additional funds for full campus-wide expansion of the wireless network.
Bender said that if this plan is successful, the ITS Department will begin to expand the wireless network to include green spaces in front of and behind Towers Hall, around the library and wherever else students express an interest in having outdoor wireless connection.
The fully completed project would cover the entire Otterbein campus from Uptown Westerville to Cleveland Avenue.
It would also include the equine center, sports fields and Memorial Stadium.
“The collaboration between the wireless networks of Otterbein and Westerville would allow Otterbein students to securely connect to the Uptown wireless network, as well as allowing Westerville to come onto our network,” Bender said. “But to the student, this difference would seem transparent.”
Some students, including Austin Cooper, a sophomore BA of music, already find the idea to be potentially useful.
“I think this project sounds like a great idea,” Cooper said. “It would be great to be able to have classes outside and it would allow students to do a lot more things on the Otterbein network.”
“A project like this would allow for outdoor classrooms,” Bender said. “It would allow students of all majors to spend time outside and have full-time access to the Otterbein network.”
