To facilitate the use of the Campus Network and the Internet in teaching, the Computer Centre is implementing wireless Local Area Networks (wireless LANs) in 33 centrally time-tabled classrooms on the main campus (see table below for a list of the buildings and room numbers of these classrooms).

These classrooms all have a seating capacity of over 100.  One wireless LAN access point, which is in fact a wireless extension of ACEnet (Access Everywhere Network),  will be installed in each classroom. To access the Internet in these classrooms, the teacher needs to install a wireless network interface card (wireless NIC) in his/her Notebook computer and this wireless NIC must be pre-registered with the Computer Centre.  When the notebook PC with the wireless NIC is started in the classroom, the PC will automatically be assigned an IP address and a connection to the ACEnet will be established. The teacher can then log in with his ACEnet( HKUPPP) account/password to gain access to the network.  No cabling is required for the connection.

The wireless LAN product that will be adopted is ORINOCO by Lucent Technologies.  It is IEEE 802.11b standard compliant, with data transfer rate between the access point and the wireless NIC reaching up to 11Mbps.

Installation of the above mentioned facilities is underway and would be completed before the end of August.  A limited number of pre-registered wireless NICs will be available for departments to facilitate the use of the wireless  network in classrooms.  Demonstration/briefing sessions for introducing the new service will be organised in September. The booking of these classrooms is administered through the Examination Unit of the Registry.

Another development using the wireless LAN technology is the renovation of the Rayson Huang Lecture Theatre in this summer.  See the article Computing and Video-conferencing Facilities in the renovated Rayson Huang Theatre in this issue for more details.
 

Centrally Time-tabled Classrooms with Wireless LANs
 

Building	Classroom Numbers
Chow Yei Ching	A, B, C
Chong Yuet Ming	P1 - P4
James Lee	J103
K. K. Leung	LG109
Knowles	K223, K419, K726
Library Extension	LE1 - LE6, LE8
Main	M167, M201, M217, M237
Meng Wah	T1 - T7
T. T. Tsui	TS303, TS403, TS404

 

T.Y. Shen
Tel: 2241 5229
E-mail: sty@cc.hku.hk