Wireless access growing

Despite some delays, North Lake has joined the ranks of other district schools in offering free wireless Internet access.

J. D. Haight, North Lake's dean of educational and administrative technology, said that District Communications, which provides support for the voice and data communications across the district, has installed the two new public access points that provide wireless Internet capability in the library and the cafeteria.

Haight said the new access points are now operational and open for use. The access points in the library and the cafeteria are public, unencrypted, free Internet connections.

They are available to anyone with a computer or other electronic device with wireless networking capability within a distance of roughly a 500 ft. range of the access point's base station.

A press release issued by Haight said the limit per access point is approximately 20 users. He said that dividing the bandwidth — the amount of data that can be passed through a communications channel in a given period of time — any more than that would cause the speed of each user to be extremely slow.

Haight's press release stated that, that “the speed is generally sufficient for Web surfing and e-mail, but generally not sufficient for streaming media.”

According to Haight, there were no surprises encountered in setting up the network wiring and the electricity to the location of the two access points.

Two other schools in the Dallas County Community College District have public wireless Internet access on their campuses.

Martha Hogan said that Richland College has had wireless Internet access in the college's library for more than a year, and the lunchroom and student lounge have been operational since last summer.

Jason Siegrist said that Cedar Valley College's Internet café has been open for more than a year.

For information on the Dallas County Community College District's computer usage policy, which contains rules and policies that users of the wireless network must comply with, go to
http:// www1.dcccd.edu/cat0203/ss/computer.cfm.