Agriculture bureau goes wireless with AirConnect

Wiring computers in the digital age might not be the ideal solution. Not even for a government agency protecting the interests of the country’s agriculture sector.

The Bureau of Agricultural Research made this giant leap with the acquisition of a 3Com Air Connect solution customized for mobile-intensive projects. The solution, offered primarily to the agency’s field researchers, makes access to network resources totally hassle-free.

"We made the decision to acquire 3Com Air Connect to lessen the burden of having to configure PCs to access our network," said Benjie Manuel, the bureau’s database administrator. The agency initially acquired 10 notebook LAN cards for the purpose and an access point to enable wireless connections to the existing local area network.

The cards are installed in 10 notebook computers assigned to the bureau’s researchers who meet regularly with other researchers in other agricultural bureaus for collaborative projects.

With the solution, network access can be achieved without having to run new cables. For this agency tied to the Department of Agriculture, accessing precious data without having to reconfigure and reinstall network settings becomes more of a necessity than a luxury.

"After we have deployed our laptops to our field researchers, the benefit of getting online without cables would be very much appreciated," Manuel said. "This is one of the very first implementations of wireless LAN technology in a government setting."

Manuel said the primary advantage of having to implement a wireless network in a research environment is achieving more in less time. "Accessing data is a burden for our researchers," he stressed. "After going to other agriculture bureaus they have to come back to our main office to encode their inputs in our network."

With a wireless LAN in place, researchers can simply go online on-the-fly without plugging in cables or finding data ports.

Installing and implementing a wireless LAN in the bureau proved to be cost-effective and hassle-free. Connecting the wireless access point to the network hub takes only a simple installation process, particularly on the server side.

"With the wireless LAN in place, we don’t have to create another infrastructure to accommodate new users, particularly mobile users, into the network," Manuel said.

The bureau’s Windows-based applications are served reliably to the mobile clients, without any sacrifice in performance. "Performance did not suffer when we added the AirConnect to our network," Manuel said. "Users achieve the same performance as if they were using the wired LAN."

According to Manuel, 3Com was a natural choice to provide the wireless LAN solution. "They have a good product," he said. "It’s easy to configure and install. They also provide excellent support to customers."

Air Connect also offers more complete coverage on an Ethernet LAN than other packages. Thus, more users can take advantage of the solution, with Ethernet being the most widely used network infrastructure in the corporate marketplace.

"You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to get the wireless network going," Manuel added. "You don’t need to change anything, you just snap it on."