University:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Course:
15.501/516 | Accounting
Academic year:

2023
Views:

283

Pages:

2
Author:

Maggie Arias

Our project is still on schedule despite some roadblocks (mainly because we planned for them). Project status is Yellow. I. Accomplishments We have succeeded in contacting 6 universities and have received detailed information from 3 universities. Columbia University, UVA, and Carnegie Mellon have all implemented outdoor wireless on their campuses. We extracted the following information via email communication: - vendors used - criteria used to evaluate vendors - outdoor wireless infrastructure - implementation length (time) - securities issues - implementation problems Of the 5 vendors we tried to contact (Avaya, SmartBridges, D-Link, InPath Devices, and National Datacomm Corporation), 2 of them (D-Link and InPath Devices) responded with extremely helpful information. In particular, they were able to answer the following questions: - What solutions do they use? What kinds of access points are offered? How easily can their system be integrated with our existing networks? Do they have experience with implementing outdoor wireless internet at college campuses? What is their pricing scheme? What is their outlook on the future of outdoor wireless technology? A Vendor Comparison Chart is being filled as information is collected. We are currently in the process of contacting the following wireless ISPs: Speednet Services, Inc. CommSpeed Prairie Inet We have received generic information from them but we are still waiting for them to respond to more specific questions. II. Issues We have been hoping to meet with our Project Champion to discuss the exact scope of our project. Unfortunately, we have been unsuccessful in getting in contact with her, but we will continue our efforts in doing so. We plan on sending her this project status report which hopefully will foster discussion regarding our current progress and direction. For contacting vendors, though we are more successful recently, many vendors are still unresponsive. This is a foreseen uncertainty and we will continue out efforts to contact vendors as we planned. III. Actions to be taken Our status is yellow mainly because we have not been able to update our Project Champion on our progress and figure out our exact goal and direction. We will try to firmly establish the scope and expected final deliverables and work backwards from there. We will arrange a meeting with our Project Champion within this next week to ensure that our current efforts are in line with her goals. We will also continue to contact the remaining universities for their information and compile the data as we collect it. After seeing which vendors they considered when implementing outdoor wireless, we will research those vendors. Though obtaining responses from vendors has been difficult, we will continue to pursue interviews and try asking IS&T for personal contact information. IV. Reflections and Learning As the semester progresses and work is building up in our classes, we realized that we need to make a much harder effort to gather the group. At the same time, however, our team synergy is working very well and meetings are running extremely effective.