The wireless LAN of the University was formally launched on 15 March 2000 after the Inauguration Ceremony co-organised with Lucent Technologies, the wireless LAN solution provider of the project. This event has gained rather handsome publicity and was well covered in the newspapers as the City University is the first tertiary institute in Hong Kong that has the campus wireless LAN in place.

Since the existing wired network can no longer satisfy the emerging demand of our students, the wireless LAN seems to be the right choice ahead. At the moment, 200 Access Points supporting 1,000 concurrent connections have been spread over in more than 120 classrooms and public areas on campus, including the Library, Wei Hing Theatre, Student Canteen, the 4/F Mall, Late Reading Room, Covered Terrace and academic departments. It is planned that 100 more Access Points will be installed in the coming summer and by then 1,500 concurrent connections will be supported throughout the campus.

This wireless alternative means students can access the Internet, view video-on-demand, participate in self-learning courses, attend live lectures broadcast on-line, work on assignments, retrieve information, enroll in academic registration, and join on-line forums etc. anytime and anywhere within the campus.

In order to enable our students to enjoy the full benefits of the wireless environment, a loan pool of 200 notebook computers, with a LAN card installed in each, for a maximum loan period of 24 hours has been set up for students. The notebooks are provided and maintained by the Computing Services Centre (CSC), while the daily loan pool service is operated by the Facilities Management Office (FMO). With such a notebook in hand, students can be connected to the campus network or the Internet almost everywhere on campus. A similar loan pool of 50 notebooks is also run in the Library (LIB), and students can borrow one to use anywhere inside the LIB. For students/staff who already have a compatible PC, the CSC has some LAN cards in store as well and they can borrow the cards from the same FMO counter that manage the loan pool. To supplement all the above, the CSC has set up a wireless LAN Help Desk to answer enquiry from users.

The wireless LAN will definitely be the computing setting that the world will go for. With the support of the University, departments are encouraged to buy notebooks to take advantage of this brand-new and advanced unwired environment.