RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] the new Columbia Public Library

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, Ross, Matt wrote:

> > ps--they appear to have a very large number of ethernet ports in 
> > likely locations (far more ports than computers), but I didn't see
> > any evidence that they have anything wireless happening here, which
> > would really be too bad.  I guess 802.11b wasn't really on anybody's
> > radar very much back in 1998, when the design for this was put 
> > together.
> 
> Even at that, you can always add 802.11b equipment in a storage
> room over or near your intended area of service.

Yes, but you then might do a few things differently to minimize your 
"dead" spots and such.  I think it would be a very reasonable 
retrofit given the open-ness of the central space.

> It's another matter entirely to add eithernet ports in the wall.  

>From what I saw, there are ports in every room, at every library
table location, at many wall locations, and basically all over the 
place.  Now, one other thing to know is that they went with 
ISG (Integrated Solutions Group--the guys in back of Schnucks, I 
think) as their contractor on the networking stuff.  In their "we 
did it" ad in the Columbia Library special section of the paper (all 
the contractors did one), they mention that they did a Cisco IP 
telephony "solution", so:

> If they did it right, the wires in those ports can be easily
> replaced with higher capacity wire if such a creature becomes
> available and useful.  (I don't know of a laptop that can even
> use Cat5 to its limits, let alone Cat5e or Cat6).
> 
> All that fancy architecture is nice, but if they hadn't wired
> the building for modern technology, they would have really
> screwed up.  The question now is, are those ports for patrons,
> or for future computers?

Both I suspect.  I suppose ISG could have messed up, but I'm 
guessing they did something fairly beefy with some interesting Cisco 
gear in one of the closets I didn't open. :-)

jking

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