The customer: Istituto De Nicola - Catania (Italy)

A state secondary school specialising in vocational studies in
Tourism and Surveying.  

The Business Requirement

The project regarded the design and installation of a WiFi network providing authenticated access and traffic shaping in three of the school’s buildings.

The school is made up of four blocks, one for administrative duties and a further three for teaching purposes with classrooms and laboratories.
Each of the teaching blocks has an identical three-storey structural layout:

The proposed network had to satisfy the following requirements:

• Offer total coverage on each floor of buildings A, B and C.
• Only allow network access to authenticated devices.
• Authenticate users and register access based on username and password (hot spot authentication), without necessitating use of a RADIUS server.
• Able to be integrated into the existing wired voice/data network with the central star node situated in the administration building.
  

The NetSense solution

NetSense subdivided the project into two parts:

Part 1. Design and planning of wireless access network

• Study of wireless coverage on every floor and evaluation of the number of Access Points required.
• Design of cost-effective plan for building wiring.
• Selection of appliance satisfying authentication and coding requirements.

Part 2. Identification of integrated solutions guaranteeing:

• Hot Spot authentication (to authenticate users and register access based on username and password).
• Reduce traffic impact on network due to choice of peer-to-peer software.

The NetSense solution part 1 - Design and planning of wireless access network

The results gained from the use of a site-survey tool indicated that two Access Points per floor would ensure both appropriate radio coverage and sufficient user bandwidth. NetSense’s wiring plan and the AP floor positions are shown in the following diagram.

Keeping costs down was a key element of the project's requirements. With this in mind, the appliances selected had to have an excellent cost-performance ratio. Wiring costs were further reduced through the use of the professional equipment supporting Power over Ethernet technology (NetGear Prosafe Switch FS726TP,  Netgear Prosafe Access Point WG302DS). The pre-existing inter-building wiring was already made up of Fibre Optic cables.

Wireless device authentication was performed via the activation of the access points’ WPA-2 mode. Hot spot authentication, on the other hand, had to be centralised, a requirement which was satisfied in the second part of the project.

The NetSense solution part 2 - System integration for hot-spot authentication and traffic shaping

Hot spot authentication is usually guaranteed via new users having to enter a user name and password. Once authenticated, new users are able to access all the network functionalities appropriate to their access level.

To lessen the impact of the traffic generated by the peer-to-peer software, stateful firewalls performing traffic shaping algorithms are required. These appliance are usually rather expensive.

NeSense identified a third-party software router (www.mikrotik.com) based on open-source Linux technology which enabled both requisites to be fulfilled. The software, installed in a low-cost router board and integrated as the wireless network segment’s gateway (as shown in the figure below), provided a cost-effective solution satisfying the project’s critical criteria.

The Result

Thanks to its System Integration experience, NetSense has fulfilled the school’s ambition to equip itself with wireless hot spots integrating the most up-to-date security standards without the elevated costs usually attributed to vendors such as CISCO.

Wireless access has had a revolutionary affect on the school’s teaching capabilities. Staff now have the benefit of new technologies to aid and improve their educational efficacy.

Professor Orazio Lombardo, headmaster of istituto Enrico De Nicola:

“The provision of a wireless network designed by NetSense will allow us to consider possible future service integrations which, previously, we could never possibly have dreamt of. These added value services mean that the school is now able to set up an online notice board, to share teaching material between students and teachers and create a virtual community for its members.”