FHC wireless policy

Can somebody point me to a place where I can read the official policies regarding wireless access in FHCs? I am being told that a (new?) policy says that FHCs can not have their own wireless service because they are connected to a less restrictive port on the firewall, but the FHC staff is unaware of such a policy. Is there somewhere that I can go to read "wireless is allowed" or "wireless is not allowed"?

Good question. I look a look at the Help Center, but didn't see much of anything that gave concrete guidance. The closest was This document which says "The facilities management group is responsible for purchasing and installing wireless access points." That would seem to preclude installing additional "user controlled" access points.

As a practical matter, you might ask the person who has made this claim to show you the documentation.

As for how wireless in a FHC should be set up, there's a number of issues.

Most FHC are located in a meetinghouse where any AP would not be exclusively for FHC use. If the AP is part of the meetinghouse, then patrons may not be able to print to the FHC printers because they would be on a different segment. They'd also be subject to the stricter filtering used by the rest of the building.

OTOH, the advantages of placing them on the FHC network would seem to be small. I doubt if it would grant them access to the premium websites. But it could cause issues for the non-FHC users who happen to use the FHC network. It could be confusing to find filtering policies are different in different parts of the building. I also wonder if devices that obtained their IP from one AP would have trouble when moved to another part of the building because an identical SSID is now using a different IP segment.

Hopefully the FHC computers are hard-wired. This would eliminate the need for them to use the AP to connect since that would muddy the waters even further.

aclawson wrote:I am being told that a (new?) policy says that FHCs can not have their own wireless service because they are connected to a less restrictive port on the firewall...

This doesn't make sense to me. We have an unofficial FHC, hence no special access through the firewall, but they still maintain their own subnet with a consumer wireless router and a large switch. We started doing this when IP addresses were hard to come by. The SSID and key are different than the meetinghouse. All of the PC's there are hard-wired, but guests often bring in their laptops and connect wirelessly. Being on their own subnet allows them to share resources such as printers.

If the FHC has a wireless presence, IMO the SSID and PW SHOULD be different than the meetinghouse to keep the less filtered FHC connection reserved for FHC patrons only.

Mikerowaved wrote:If the FHC has a wireless presence, IMO the SSID and PW SHOULD be different than the meetinghouse to keep the less filtered FHC connection reserved for FHC patrons only.

But how long do you think that different password would remain a secret? If it was limited to FHC computers that can't be hard-wired, that's one thing. But when you give out the password to any patron that asks for it .... the secret won't last long.

russellhltn wrote:But how long do you think that different password would remain a secret? If it was limited to FHC computers that can't be hard-wired, that's one thing. But when you give out the password to any patron that asks for it .... the secret won't last long.

Already thought of that. The WiFi KEY changes every so often and is always available on the chalkboard in the FHC room. Call it another perk for doing family history research there!

aclawson wrote:... where I can read the official policies regarding wireless access in FHCs?

I have not read an "official" policy for wireless access inside FHCs hosted in meetinghouses. While FH would like FHC guests to have access to the LDSaccess wireless SSID (if available)associated with the Meetinghouse Internet standard filter policy, I think FH generally does not want wireless APs connected to the FHC special purpose network zone. I imagine this helps ensure that FHC resources are appropriately used in the MH.

Our stake fhc uses the church managed wireless access points with no issues. We freely communicate the password with non member users who bring their laptop/tablets. The PCs are hardwired, and only the authorized fhc pcs can run the fhc portal.

Proxy apps for android and idevices bypass everything, so if people "need" to work, they can. The firewall is really there to protect us from bad stuff. But, any "bad" user can bypass the security.