DM Spring Break 2009 - Day 3

Today was the first day of actual work, which was nice. We had an orientation in the morning, which was basically the systems guys explaining what Disciple Makers is, what its history is, what they do now, and specifically what systems does. Then right before lunch we got to open the Wireless-N 2.4/5 GHz wireless router they purchased and set that up. Jason (one of the systems people) and I worked on flashing the firmware with a much better open source solution than the stock firmware and then configuring it to use WPA2 Enterprise. Eventually we will want the access point to communicate with a RADIUS server on a virtual machine for staff login authentication with LDAP, but we have been having problems with getting the RADIUS server to accept connections, so for now it uses WPA2/Personal with a shared key for authentication. Tomorrow we should be able to iron out the wrinkles and get the RADIUS server working.

After dinner we went back to work and installed the new access point in the ceiling. Jason and I worked on drilling holes for a crude shelf that hangs down from the rafters in the ceiling. The ceiling tiles were too small to assemble it on the ground and then hoist it up, so we had to screw in everything in the ceiling, but it was a lot of fun. They had an existing Netgear wireless access point that they used for their unsecured guest network, so we took that and installed it on the shelf next to the new Linksys router. Noah, Tom, Brian, and Jeremy ran an extension cord and several meters of Cat6 cable to the entrance where we stuck the access points, at which point we tested the cables, plugged them in, put the ceiling tiles back, and went to the creamery to get some of the best ice cream I've had in my life. You can actually get a degree in ice cream making at Penn State apparently...

EDIT: I "accidentally" specified that we were using WPA2/Enterprise with a shared key for temporary authentication. As Jeremy has very kindly pointed out, this is not possible, and we were instead using WPA2/Personal for shared key authentication. I apologize to all the people I have offended with this grievous error.