Idiosyncrasies of location tracking

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: JOANIE WEXLER ON WIRELESS IN THE
ENTERPRISE
10/24/05
Today's focus: Idiosyncrasies of location tracking

Dear security.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Hospital recalls early lessons with location tracking
* Links related to Wireless in the Enterprise
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: Idiosyncrasies of location tracking

By Joanie Wexler

If you read the last newsletter
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlwir9323> , you'll know that
Rockford Memorial Hospital in Rockford, Ill., hopes to use
Wi-Fi-based asset location tracking to take a chomp out of the
$1.5 million in annual productivity losses it attributes to
searching for mobile equipment.

It has partially deployed a system combining the PanGo Networks
PanGo Locator application, Cisco 1100 and 1200 series access
points, and Four Rivers asset management software. Joe
Granneman, Rockford Memorial's manager of networking and data
security and HIPAA security officer, says the location-tracking
system's ability to use the hospital's existing Wi-Fi network to
communicate location information to the application sealed the
deal.

Earlier tracking systems used infrared-based technology and
readers with specially cabled overlay networks that would have
cost a quarter of a million dollars to install. "The healthcare
community just doesn't have that to spend, regardless of the
potential savings," Granneman says.

The existing cabled communications network couldn't be used for
transporting asset-tracking information because of interference
problems with the older technology, explains Gary Bayston,
manager of biomedical engineering.

Granneman notes that with the Wi-Fi setup, "security was
tricky." The PanGo tags available when the project got underway
supported 802.11 Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption,
which wasn't strong enough to meet hospital policy. So the
hospital created a custom Wi-Fi virtual LAN (VLAN) for asset
tracking that can't see any other applications, such as the
hospital information system or pharmacy system. The Cisco 1100
and 1200 access points each support six different service set
identifiers (SSID), each with different security profiles,
Granneman explains.

The next release of PanGo tags, due late this year, are
scheduled to support stronger encryption - Wi-Fi Protected
Access (WPA), according to PanGo. However, a company
spokesperson says, "WPA association takes more time and as a
result eats up more battery power. Changing batteries too often
can be labor-intensive, so generally our customers don't ask for
WPA for asset tracking."

Granneman was glad he built the Wi-Fi network with 50% coverage
overlap in anticipation of supporting voice over IP (VoIP),
because location accuracy is closely tied to how many access
points a tag can hear, he says.

He adds that he discovered that the dynamic power allocation
mode supported by Cisco access points - and those made by other
vendors - must be disabled to work with location tracking.
Location is determined by a signal-strength table built during a
location site survey, and dynamic power allocation (whereby if
an access point fails, those around it compensate), throws
accuracy off, he explains.

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To contact: Joanie Wexler

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology
writer/editor in California's Silicon Valley who has spent most
of her career analyzing trends and news in the computer
networking industry. She welcomes your comments on the articles
published in this newsletter, as well as your ideas for future
article topics. Reach her at <mailto:joanie@jwexler.com>.
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