Authentication Gets Into Stanford: Page 3 of 6

Like the rest of Silicon Valley, Stanford has suffered from the IT industry downturn. Departments face budget cuts of nearly 10 percent this year. So the original justification for wireless--that it's the next big thing--doesn't wash anymore (see The Hard Sell, page 79). Instead, wireless is now being considered as a way to cut infrastructure costs. Instead of wiring new buildings with more cable, the university may equip the buildings with wireless access points. But that's still under debate, since the wireless bandwidth isn't enough for every academic application, and buildings with concrete-lined walls or other physical interference can't support wireless access points.

Stanford will also phase out its homegrown Leland client in the next year or two, Reese says. It may go with a Web-based authentication scheme, or an IPsec (IP security)-based VPN tunnel to the wireless LAN. "Or the next generation of wireless devices may have a whole other solution," Reese says.

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