Office of the Chief Information Officer Press Release
The University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia

Monday, January 28, 2008

WRITER: Sarah Lee, 706/542-5359, slee23@uga.edu
CONTACT: David Stewart, 706-542-0363, stewart@uga.edu

EITS continues expansion of PAWS wireless network in 2008

ATHENS, Ga.— UGA's Enterprise Information Technology Services (EITS) has received Student Technology Fee monies to expand wireless service to campus over the next year. The University offers wireless access to students via PAWS (Personal Access Wireless/Walkup System), which was initiated in 2001.

Students use wireless devices at locations throughout campus, including Herty Field (pictured)

David Stewart, an IT senior manager with EITS who has been overseeing the project, notes that in 2006 "EITS performed a due diligence study of wireless networking" and Cisco equipment was chosen in the deployment of what Stewart refers to as centralized wireless.

"In this model, the individual access points (devices which distribute the wireless signal over a given area) are centrally managed by EITS. We also use centrally controlled Bluesocket gateways for authentication," he says. "This gives students, faculty, and staff greater access to the network for instructional purposes."

Stewart also notes that in calendar year 2007, $795,000 was spent implementing the solution that resulted in 414 new wireless access points, 80 already existing access points integrated, and the addition of wireless coverage to 36 buildings and over 920,000 square feet of campus.

Additionally, according to data from the UGA Registrar's Office, 16,250 seats in instructional areas were added to the wireless network, while 290,000 credit hours were accumulated and 102,000 students took classes in these areas.

Bluesocket gateways are located through campus to provide secure access to PAWS via the UGA MyID username/password

Stewart says that only student labs, classrooms, lobbies, study areas, reading rooms, graduate student offices, student lounges, and other instructional and student areas are slated for wireless coverage under the project. Faculty offices, administrative offices, research labs, and faculty lounges and reading rooms will not be covered. However, individual departments can coordinate with EITS to add those non-instructional areas to the centralized wireless system for a small fee. This will result in cost savings to the departments since the management and maintenance of the wireless network will be handled by EITS.

"We are continuing to add buildings," Stewart notes. "In the January-March timeline we'll be upgrading the wireless network in the Student Learning Center and completely covering the Main Library and Science Library with a wireless network."

Please refer to the following Web sites for related information:

PAWS (paws.uga.edu)

Student Technology Fee (techfee.uga.edu)

UGA MyID ( myid.uga.edu)

About the Office of the CIO and EITS
The Office of the Chief Information Officer and Enterprise Information Technology Services (EITS) are committed to the mission of UGA as a land-and-sea-grant institution where academics come first and the research extensive university community encourages research efforts at the undergraduate and graduate levels. To that end, under the direction of the University´s Chief Information Officer, EITS endeavors to provide a robust, reliable, and secure information technology infrastructure, maintain essential production services, and offer world-class support.