CLEVELAND—In what could be the largest public wireless service in the world, Case Western Reserve University is opening more than 1,230 Cisco Aironet 1200 Series wireless access points on September 1, providing free Internet access to faculty, students, staff and visitors to the Case campus and University Circle.

"This is the first phase of blanketing Cleveland with free wireless Internet access—a project we call OneCleveland," said Lev Gonick, vice president of information technology services and chief information officer at Case. "We are working with our industry partners, Cisco Systems Inc. and Sprint, to complete the Cisco Aironet wireless network across University Circle, providing wireless access to faculty, staff, students and visitors who come to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, or any of the other cultural and educational resources in the University Circle neighborhood."

Adding to a network already 10 to 100 times faster than most other universities, this level of connectivity is made possible with Cisco Aironet wireless technology and the University's Cisco Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet network based on Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series and Catalyst 4000 Series Switches. With one of the fastest local area networks built on Cisco networking equipment, faculty, staff, students and visitors gain maximum mobility and flexibility as they take advantage of voice and streaming video applications, access to e-curriculums and other University services from virtually anywhere on campus and in University Circle.

"Cisco is proud to be a part of this far-reaching, community-based wireless effort by Case Western Reserve University," said Christine Falsetti, director of wireless and mobility for Cisco's Product Technology and Marketing Organization. "We're excited about this effort because we believe anywhere, anytime access provides for a more collaborative and flexible environment for learning."

OneCleveland is committed to creating a seamless, digital infrastructure for the residents, businesses and institutions of Northeast Ohio. The program's objectives include:
* Empowering individuals for personal and economic opportunities
* Enhancing education and training opportunities for students and adults
* Helping cities and counties to provide services in new ways
* Supporting the delivery of world-class health services
* Expanding opportunities for educational and cultural institutions and neighboring communities
* Creating and linking area networks to take advantage of efficiencies of scale to boost regional capacity for these activities"

The network we are designing is a way for Case to reach out to the community and connect the University and Greater Cleveland into one cohesive whole," said Gonick. "In order to fulfill our vision of becoming the most powerful learning environment in the world, we need to start at home and become a force for change and improvement in our city and region."

Tim Mueller, chief development officer for the city of Cleveland, praised the new effort and said the city understands how the growing power of wireless provides its citizens with enormous opportunities."The vision of OneCleveland, to connect, enable and transform our city through leveraging what is possible when we are all connected is a message that rings true for all of Cleveland," Mueller said. "This is an exciting vision that extends the hand of partnership between Case and the regional community outside of University Circle."

In addition, design students at the Cleveland Institute of Art, in collaboration with students at the Case School of Engineering, are developing global positioning systems (GPS) applications incorporating text, video, audio, and even speech recognition, to allow students and visitors to take self-guided tours around University Circle using their own personal digital assistants (PDA).

–Case–