Dartmouth to roll out video over WiFi

Dartmouth College has already positioned itself as a leader in employing new wireless technologies on campus. They rolled out VoIP over WiFi last year, and now they're looking to push video to classrooms over 802.11a. They chose the standard as opposed to going with 802.11g because their WLAN-based VoIP phones operate over 802.11b, which shares the same radio frequency as 802.11g. Reserving non-competitive bandwidth for video on 802.11a, which operates at its own radio frequency, is therefore an attractive option. They plan to triple the number of access points and move from Cisco to Aruba hardware because of the latter's support for intelligent switching. They'll also step up plans to convert more of their existing VoIP lines to WiFi. The long-term goal? Some pretty sci-fi scenarios in which students will be able to do things like speak queries to a worn
Vocera VoIP badge seeking directions to library resources, and receive an automated voice response telling them the location in relation to where they're standing.
Man, do we feel gypped — back when we went to college, they were still working on digitizing the card catalogue.

[Via Wi-Fi Net News]