Wireless Help

Since Fall 2000, the Law School has made wireless network access available for students anywhere on the Law School grounds, in addition to the wired access already available from many locations. What follows is a little help getting started with your wireless card. Advice about how to purchase a wireless card or system is available from the Computer Recommendations page. Info about how to use these cards is below under "Setting Up Your Laptop"

Wireless at the Law School and why it is changing (and changing again, and changing again..)

Wireless is an inherently insecure medium. Someone can potentially "sniff" for personal or private information transmitted over wireless from miles away or use the University's network to launch network attacks. The University is moving to a more secure wireless protocol known as EAP-TLS to protect its network and to encrypt wireless traffic so that sniffed information is not usable. Previously, a secure but proprietary protocol known as LEAP was available for users of Cisco cards, but this has now been shown to have security weaknesses that have made it unsuitable for full-time use.

We have completed our transition to 802.11g, a faster wireless protocol. 802.11g will be backwards compatible with the previous standard, 802.11b, so this should not affect people who currently have working cards, but it will allow for faster connection speed for those with 802.11g compatible cards. 802.11a hardware has actually been installed as well, but we do not recommend 802.11a-only cards, because coverage will be very spotty for 802.11a.

Students have weathered several changes in wireless over the last few years, and, for better and worse, those changes are likely to continue because of the nature of the moving target that wireless technology is these days.

Supported Wireless Cards

The Law School supports the Cisco 352 and will now support the built-in wireless (Dell 1300/350/1450 and Intel 2200) in the new Law Bundle. The Law School will make every effort to ensure that wireless works for you if you have one of these two types of wireless connections with the the current or previous Law bundles.

The University (as opposed to the Law School) has standardized on Cisco 352 and Apple AirPort wireless cards. Full online instructions on setup and ITC Help Desk telephone support are available for these cards, as well as other cards described in ITC's Choosing a Wireless Card Document. Other 802.11bg wireless "WiFi" devices should work on the wireless network (at Law and elsewhere), however only generic setup information and no Law School Help Desk support are provided (though the University ITC help desk at 4-3731 will attempt, with no guarantees, to help anyone with a WiFi-certified card supporting 128-bit WEP encryption--see information below).

Setting Up Your Laptop

Recommended Wireless Network devices for Law Students: Cisco 352 or the built in wireless in the Law Bundle.

Important Security Note: For reasons known only to Microsoft and computer manufacturers, many new laptops with XP, and to a lesser extent, Windows 2000, are shipped with very poor default security setups. We have now seen many individuals with new computers whose machines get compromised within hours or even minutes of getting on the network. With a wired or wireless connection in the Law School, you have a high-speed connection to the Internet. For better and worse, this also means the Internet has a high-speed connection to YOU. We do recommend that you take basic precautions like not turning on File and Print Sharing (or making sure it is turned off), setting good passwords on all your administrative accounts, and making sure your virus protection and Windows Updates are up-to-date weekly. Norton antivirus, available with instructions for free from Software Central, makes keeping up to date very easy. BEFORE setting up wireless, see how to set up windows XP securely.

Currently, the Law School has two wireless networks, the encrypted (EAP-TLS) "cavalier" network and the open "wahoo" network. For security and privacy reasons, we advise all students to set up to use the cavalier network. If you have problems using the cavalier network, try the wahoo network. Instructions for "backing down" to wahoo can be found in common problems and solutions (along with other suggestions for people having problems getting wireless to work).

If the cavalier network works fine for you, we advise that you delete the wahoo network from your list of preferred networks (you'll see where this list is as you proceed through the directions below). If you have problems, you can always add it back later.

To get through the directions below, you will need internet access before your wireless is set up. To use a wired connection at the Law School, see Ethernet Connections at the Law School.

Finally, full instructions for setting up your card can be found at http://www.itc.virginia.edu/wireless

Tips and Problem Solving after your initial setup:

If you have problems with wireless in Windows XP, please see common problems and solutions.
If you are having trouble connecting or are getting poor connections, try moving somewhere else. Sometimes a foot or two will do. Sometimes sitting on the other side of a table will fix things. Sometime taking your mother's advice and sitting up straight (instead of hunching over your laptop) will help. If you find large "dead spots" that cause you problems, let us know. See the next item.
Dead Spots--most of the Law School should have good radio coverage. Coverage reaches outside the Law School for some distance in many directions, but varies--some outside benches, for instance, are within coverage, and some are not. The Spies Garden area (the central courtyard) IS covered. The third floor of Slaughter is not covered. If you find some area you think should work and does not, please let U.Va. ITC know at consult@virginia.edu.
Be Careful with the PCMCIA card. Remove the wireless card when you pack your computer away--it's pretty sturdy, but it sticks out and can break in your carrying case. On Dell (and some other) computers, this means clicking on your PC Card manager (one of the things on the bottom right of your screen), clicking on the PC4800 Wireless PCMCIA adaptor, and clicking "Stop" (or "Remove"), and then removing the card after it says you can. It's a trade-off, though--if you remove the card TOO often, eventually it will wear out.
Bluetooth: Because of our wireless network, we ask that you DO NOT get any "Bluetooth" accessories for your laptop. Bluetooth is a wireless protocol that will interfere with our 802.11b wireless network, and our wireless network will interfere with it (so any accessories you had might well not work). In the 2001-2002 school year, many new devices may use the bluetooth wireless protocol including printers, handheld devices (Palms, Visors, etc), cordless phones, and wireless networking cards.