Wireless networking nonsense

[altivo]

Had a conference with an outside consultant today about putting wireless for public use into the library. May not be quite as costly as I'd thought, but he verified my main concerns. Bandwidth issues and abuse are an inevitable problem. He recommends against a completely open node, but I'm afraid of all the complaints we'd get from folks who can't negotiate a captive node to get connected up. However, if I'm not going to have to spec it out, set it up, or maintain it, they can do whatever they like.

Low door count at work, in fact, lowest I can ever remember at just over 300 on a Friday. Dunno what's with that, unless the prediction of snow was keeping people in. Said snow wasn't really supposed to arrive until midnight, though. Looking at the radar right now, I think it will miss us pretty much.

Nothing to do this weekend but chores and edit a newsletter, though I should go out for some groceries I guess. And Gary has a performance in Belvidere tomorrow evening for the conservation district's "Christmas Walk" so I'll probably attend that. Hmm, means I better take a spindle or some knitting. I remember needing that last year.

Done with the turkey leftovers mostly. Time to think of something else to make.

Also time for bed. Night all.

Comments

[moonhare]

We sort of cheated on bandwidth. Our main lines to our server are through COX (installed by Verizon but the State switched services a year or two ago). We also have a separate COX line, much like a house line, that dates back to before I started helping with the IT maintenance (the line was installed under some grant or program early in the decade). To conserve bandwidth we dropped our 'commercial' Cisco wireless off the server and installed a little Lynksys on the lone line.

The potential for abuse, on various levels, is high, but we have a semi-private key that we give to those who ask and I tell them frankly that they can sit out front and play if they want to. There have been many instances of "I can't connect," at least one every other day, but generally it comes down to user settings that I won't recommend changing if they don't fully understand their machine.

[altivo]

The "can't connect" issue is the biggest reason that I do not want to be responsible for this. We have users who throw violent tantrums sometimes over this stuff, and make all sorts of terrible threats. The old boss took that in stride. She had plenty of experience and confidence that she was right. The new boss seems to think that we have to always give everyone whatever they demand. Always.