the way i see IT

We’re a host site for the Leadership Summit again this year.  It’s always a good chance to test out the open WiFi here at CLC.  I rarely see more than 1 or 2 users on the wireless, but today we had about a dozen at the busiest time.  I’m actually surprised there aren’t more users than that considering we have almost 400 people attending the Summit.

The wireless system I installed a while back is really cool.  I’ve got a Sonicwall Pro 2040 installed that does all our content filtering, gateway antivirus, firewall, VPN, etc.  It also combines our DSL  & RoadRunner connections into a redundant, load-balanced Internet connection.   On top of all that, it also centrally manages the wireless access points around campus.

I have several SonicPoints installed in key areas.  From the Pro 2040, I configure a SonicPoint profile, including the SSID, the encryption (if any) and the radio schedule.  I can setup a schedule of when I want the radio to be active, which is great because I can turn it off after 9pm, for example, to prevent people from camping out in our parking lot after hours.

Once I have the profile just the way I want it, I can push it out to any and all SonicPoints that the 2040 auto-discovers on the network.  If I ever need to make a configuration change, I do it in the profile and then synchronize the SonicPoints.  I can also monitor the status of all the SP’s from the 2040 console and see how many people are connected at what speed and strength.  Also the SP’s are stuck in their own subnet away from the rest of our network, so if you’re connected to our wireless, you can’t access anything but the Internet.

I’ve been really impressed by our Sonicwall equipment and their support, so if you’re looking for something with these features, check out Sonicwall.