City of Oakland Police Department Deploys LAN/WAN Mobile Data
Solution
City of Oakland, California, said that it selected Padcom,
Inc. of Bethlehem, PA, and XcelleNet based in Chicago, IL to provide
its law enforcement officers with high-speed access to large data
files from their patrol vehicles.
City officials looked at the implementation of a high-speed
wireless system as a way of boosting the efficiency of its police
force. Previously, depending on the current RF infrastructure to
transmit mug shots or detailed crime reports, officers were forced
to wait hours for reports that more often than not did not make it
through the cloyed network.
With a system upgrade relying on Padcom’s TotalRoam Ellipse™
software platform, the City’s police force is now equipped with
over 220 squad cars computers enabling officers to receive large
files via a wireless LAN available to them in parking-lot sites
citywide.
Seamlessly supporting the data exchange between two dissimilar
networks, TotalRoam’s Ellipse software has created a LAN/WAN data
networking solution. Through a combination of 802.11 Wireless LAN
capabilities and Motorola RD-LAP network interfaces, Oakland Police
now have uninterrupted access to the critical data they need, Padcom
said in a statement.
The City has also selected XcelleNet’s mobile management
product Afaria™
to centrally distribute software applications and updates, track
hardware and software assets, and exchange critical data with the
devices. Afaria uses TotalRoam as a wireless conduit to perform its
system management tasks for the mobile devices.
When their patrol vehicle enters any of the 802.11 coverage
areas, officers are able to begin large file downloads; if they are
called to crime scene, thus interrupting the process, they can
resume the process when they return to any one of the LAN-served
parking lots.
The City of Oakland expects the wireless system upgrade will
provide citizens with a more efficient police force who will be able
to respond to their needs with the most up-to-date information.
For more information: http://www.padcomusa.com/releases/oakland.html
Mobileinfo Comments and Advisory: We think that this
hybrid network implementation by the City of Oakland is an excellent
wireless network architecture that utilizes a wireless LAN in a
local area environment and utilizes wireless WAN only outside the
LAN coverage area. We encourage more users to adopt this
hybrid implementation. In fact, we believe that wireless LAN and
wide area network designers should see this as the way of the
future. We strongly feel that it is.
