Subject: [NEXTEL-1] "Fight Crime Without Wires"

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 13:36:22 -0500

"Fight Crime Without Wires"

InformationWeek (02/09/04); Ewalt, David M.

Aurora, Colo., has installed a new wireless network to connect its
public-safety workers, an upgrade from its radio system. A federal grant
helped the city to move to a cellular digital packet data network, but
when that was no longer supported, city officials were left with 161
fixed cellular modems and an interest in broadband technologies.  The
new hybrid network uses general packet radio service and Wi-fi networks
to connect the city's public-service vehicles through laptops and GPRS
connections. Parked vehicles use a Wi-fi link, which is faster. Police
officers can get mug shots more quickly and cooperate in real time, and
firefighters can check maps of the areas they are traveling to for water
mains and gas lines. The system was deployed by Anyware Network
Solutions and uses NetMotion Wire-less software; it is managed by
Wavelink's Avalanche and Mobile Manager, which allows for remote
upgrades.

==============================================================================

Fight Crime Without Wires Feb. 9, 2004

Colorado city's wireless network uses GPRS and Wi-Fi
to get information to public-safety workers faster
By David M. Ewalt

The city of Aurora located just outside of Denver, is Colorado's
third-largest city, home to nearly 300,000 people and 10,000 businesses.
A fleet of 300 police cars and fire trucks helps keep the city safe, and
a new, innovative wireless network keeps public-safety workers connected
wherever they go.  The result: more-efficient crime fighting and faster
response to fires.
Throughout the 1990s, public-safety agencies in Aurora used a radio
system to feed limited data about the location of fires and crimes to
computers in city vehicles. But as the city prepared to enter the 21st
century, the technology became increasingly obsolete, and the
vendor--Motorola Inc.--eventually stopped supporting it. Thanks to a
federal grant, the city was able to deploy a more-modern system that
used a 19.2-Kbps Cellular Digital Packet Data network to send files to
mobile data terminals in each car. But a year and a half ago, vendor
AT&T Wireless decided not to support CDPD any longer.
City officials were left in a quandary. They had installed 161 fixed,
mounted cellular modems around the municipality but were increasingly
interested in new broadband technologies, including 802.11 wireless
networks. After nine months of testing, they decided to use a little of
both, implementing a hybrid network consisting of 56-Kbps and 114-Kbps
General Packet Radio Service and Wi-Fi networks that can handle up to 11
Mbps.

Today, Aurora's public-service vehicles connect on the road and download
necessary files to a laptop via a GPRS connection, provided by T-Mobile,
which has the best coverage in the area. When they're parked in a city
lot or docked in a fire station or depot, the vehicles connect via a
faster Wi-Fi link, letting them download bigger files. "You can download
an entire application in the time it takes to fill up your gas tank,"
says Mike Bedwell, the city's manager of Public Safety Systems.

There are many benefits of such a system. Police officers can download a
mug shot in 20 seconds, as opposed to 50 minutes using the old network.
It also lets cops cooperate in real time. "A police officer can write
his reports in the police vehicle and send them back in real time,"
Bedwell says. "That report can be sitting within minutes on a
detective's desk. And the sooner an investigator can react to a crime,
the more likely it is to be solved." In the past, it would take a couple
of days for paper reports to trickle through the system.

The Fire Department benefits, too. The system lets firefighters examine
maps of an area when they're heading to a fire, alerting them to
possible hazards such as gas lines and showing the location of water
mains that may help fight the fire. "The more information and tools you
have, the better," Bedwell says.

The system, which cost between $100,000 and $200,000 to implement, was
deployed by integrator Anyware Network Solutions Inc.

Software from NetMotion Wire- less Inc. allows users to roam seamlessly
between Wi-Fi and GPRS networks, and it also encrypts the communications
in order to keep the system secure. Wavelink Corp.'s Avalanche and
Mobile Manager allow the city to centrally manage the network and all
the devices on it from a single console, as well as push software and
data updates out to vehicles.

That ability to perform remote upgrades is a key feature, Bedwell says.
Last summer, before the Wavelink software was in place, the Blaster worm
infected the network, requiring workers to be called in on a weekend to
individually update the virus-protection software on each notebook
computer.  But now that the system is in place, they can easily change
configurations on any machine in the system, even if it's in a police
car racing down the highway. "Pushing it out is a lot more efficient,"
Bedwell says. "And we save on overtime costs."

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17602134

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