New Mexico County Pioneers Courthouse Wi-Fi Service

By Bob Brewin

August 16, 2004 12:00 PM ET

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Computerworld - Bernalillo County, N.M., has adopted Wi-Fi technology to support Internet access for judges, lawyers and jurors in its courthouse. The service also provides wireless voice-over-IP phone service for security personnel.
Jim McMillan, principal court technology consultant at the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., called Bernalillo county a pioneer in the use of Wi-Fi service and Wi-Fi VoIP phones in courts. McMillan said the Bernalillo courthouse is one of the first in the country to offer free Wi-Fi service to jurors.
Paul Roybal, CIO of the Metropolitan Court in Bernalillo county, which encompasses greater Albuquerque, said the court this month kicked off the second phase of a $150,000 Wi-Fi deployment that began in February. It will provide both Wi-Fi VoIP and data services throughout the 10-story courthouse. The Wi-Fi network is intended to reduce juror frustration with waiting to be called for cases, Roybal noted.
The network hardware includes two BeaconMaster Layer 3 routers from Chantry Networks Inc. in Waltham, Mass. Once the project is completed, the network will have 65 Chantry BeaconPoint 802.11a/b/g access points, Roybal said.
Addressing Security
The VoIP phone service will replace a dedicated 900-MHz phone system that had trouble operating in some areas of the steel and concrete structure. The VoIP service will also get around a ban on using cell phones in the courthouse, according to Roybal.


Wi-Fi service at the Bernalillo county courthouse will let lawyers conduct online research.

Luc Roy, senior director of product management at Chantry, said the BeaconMaster routers used in the Bernalillo courthouse segregate traffic and subject it to a firewall through virtual private network connections. Each router is capable of supporting 50 VPNs.
Roy said network managers can control access to subnetworks by assigning different sets of Wi-Fi service set identifiers, the header broadcast by an access point. Client devices must use the same SSID as the one broadcast by the access point, and judges, lawyers and jurors will all be assigned different SSIDs in the courthouse.
The network uses two BeaconMaster 1100 routers, which can support up to 100 access points each and are priced at $22,000 apiece. The BeaconPoint access points cost $395 each.
Roybal said he has equipped the court security force with 36 NetLink Wi-Fi VoIP phones from SpectraLink Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Ben Guderian, director of marketing at SpectraLink, said the phones cost $595 each. Although that might seem high compared with the price of basic cell phones, which go for around $100, Guderian said mobile VoIP users save on monthly costsfor airtime.
McMillan said the Bernalillo installation is the beginning of a trend in Wi-Fi deployments at courthouses nationwide. The state of North Carolina plans to install Wi-Fi in all 100 of its courthouses, while New York-based Courtroom Connect has installed fee-based Wi-Fi networks in 21 state and municipal courts.

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