CITES Wireless Network Design Practices

This page contains information for IT professionals about CITES wireless network design practices.

Last content revision 12/6/05

Wireless network plans

The propagation of wireless coverage throughout the Urbana-Champaign campus is a long-term project that must be undertaken with cooperation between departments and CITES in order to ensure thorough and secure coverage in the areas that will need it.

In order to have a wireless network function properly we must minimize interference, which is done by limiting the amount of same frequency overlap in the air space. The signals propagate three dimensionally and penetrate walls and floors, so formulating a coverage pattern is similar to solving a 3-D puzzle. Consequently, any contiguous spaces having wireless coverage must be treated as one large area during the planning.

The campus network upgrade plans call for public spaces such as lecture halls, student lounges, dining areas, and other gathering spaces to be covered by CITES-installed wireless equipment. Since many of these areas are too large for a single access point to provide adequate coverage, CITES performs either partial or complete building designs for each of the public spaces in question.

Non-public spaces such as offices, dorm rooms, and laboratories are not funded by the campus upgrade project. However, if a department wishes to have wireless coverage in non-public spaces (either at the same time or in the future), it is less expensive and more efficient to design a single plan for all parts of the building that will either initially or eventually be covered.

A building design is determined by a combination of surveying and utilizing a software prediction program. Not all the access points (APs) must be installed initially, but the plan must be in place before we can decide which APs to install in order to cover a specific portion of a building. This way, if and when a department decides that they are ready for full-building coverage, a plan is already in place and we simply install additional equipment in the building.

If all departments occupying a building agree that they only want coverage in some specific areas, and that no other areas will need to be be covered in the future, then we will plan accordingly. But in the event that they decide they want us to expand the wireless coverage after that initial plan is completed, it is likely that the prior plan will have to be replaced entirely instead of being expanded. This means that the existing cable runs will be abandoned and the equipment relocated with new cable running to it. If the standards for specifying equipment have changed, then the old equipment may have to be discarded entirely and new equipment purchased for all the AP locations. Any time you request an unplanned change in your building’s wireless coverage, you are placed at the bottom of the waiting list for wireless designs. With this in mind, any plan to cover only specific areas of a building and its implications needs to be approved and understood by all the departments that are occupying the building.

Documentation of existing or proposed wireless networking equipment

There are several options available for design, implementation, and management of an on-campus wireless network, including fully CITES-managed (UIUCnet Wireless), a CITES-departmental partnership (Secure Departmental Wireless), and fully departmentally-managed (Independently Secure or Isolated Departmental Wireless).

However, as with any networking equipment, all wireless equipment must be approved by CITES and documented even if it is fully departmentally-managed. (In addition, equipment used for the UIUCnet Wireless network must be purchased by CITES.)

Failure to comply with this policy may result in the loss of UIUCnet wired and non-wired network connections for your entire department. For more details see the Interim Policy On Appropriate Use Of Computers And Network Systems At The University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign (http://www.fs.uiuc.edu/cam/CAM/viii/viii-1.1.html), and the clarification of section 8.

We need documentation of your existing or proposed wireless implementation in order to assess the security of your wireless network and verify that it meets the appropriate campus-wide security standards. For equipment that is not part of UIUCnet Wireless, but is connected to the UIUC wired network, the department must show CITES that they provided security and access control equivalent to UIUCnet Wireless’ system. (Details about UIUCnet Wireless can be found on-line at the wireless administrators' information pages).

The information we need to assess and document the security of your current or proposed wireless implementation is as follows:

For all wireless equipment, whether it is connected to the UIUCnet wired network or not, we need to know what type of interference we can expect when we are conducting our survey and designing a coverage plan.

This is the information we need regarding the location and configuration for each existing or proposed access point:

Services provided by each group and contacts for specific questions

CITES Network Design Office (NDO)

CITES Cabling Installation and Maintenance Services (CIMS)

Facilities and Services (used to be called Operation and Maintenance)

CITES Network Maintenance

CITES Help Desk

Basic requirements to have wireless networking