City's mesh network nets criminals

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject:        City's mesh network nets criminals
Author: "Dayton, Sky" <Sky () boingo com>
Date:           10th December 2004 9:43:36 pm

Interesting...for IP...

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City's mesh network nets criminals

By Jim Rendon, News Writer
05 Nov 2004 | SearchNetworking.com      

ATLANTA -- Last year New Orleans ranked as having the highest per capita
murder rate in the U.S., with 275 homicides. But Thursday at the
Networking Decisions 2004 conference, one of the city's technologists
said it's working to keep citizens safe with the help of wireless
networking technology. 

In January, New Orleans launched a pilot project setting up an 802.11b
wireless mesh network and mounting connected IP-based surveillance
cameras in high crime neighborhoods. The city uses images from the
cameras to help convict offenders caught in the act. 

In the space of six months, the neighborhood's murder rate was down 57%
and auto thefts were down 30%, according to Chris Drake, project
director of the mayor's office of technology in New Orleans. 

"The cameras have helped because it is often hard to get witnesses to
testify," Drake said. "This is a witness that can't be intimidated." 

New Orleans is one of several dozen municipalities across the U.S. that
has implemented wireless broadband networks. Drake said the city is
using an 802.11b wireless mesh network from Tropos Networks Inc. of
Sunnyvale, Calif., to deploy Wi-Fi across high crime neighborhoods. 

By using a mesh architecture
<http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid7_gc
i947480,00.html>  that passes data along from access point to access
point, Drake said, New Orleans has been able to control deployment costs
and maintain greater flexibility in choosing access points locations. 

Since mesh networks move data from one access point to the next, fewer
hard-wired connections are required. Such a design reduces costs, Drake
said, because access points require fewer cables. 

But because moving data from access point to access point utilizes a
good deal of bandwidth on the wireless network, the city found that it
needed to hard-wire a connection after every two access points.
Otherwise, Drake said, the available bandwidth would sink below 1 Mbps. 

The police department is also using the Wi-Fi connection to transmit
police reports and ticket information so that when a traffic ticket is
issued, the data is sent directly into the city's computer system,
bypassing a manual process that is prone to errors. 

But Drake said the most effective element of the program has been the IP
surveillance cameras. They pan over 350 degrees and zoom in and out.
They are shielded behind bullet proof casings and are remotely
controlled from headquarters. 

The cameras can shoot between five and 10 frames per second, and are set
up to provide a clear enough picture of a criminal's face that a
perpetrator can be positively identified in court. The images are
captured to a hard drive and archived for 72 hours. 

Rather than use the more popular MPEG digital video format, the city
instead uses the Motion JPEG format. Drake said courts have thrown out
MPEG images because they combine frames for a composite image. Motion
JPEG, however, does not merge frames and, as a result, has held up more
successfully in court. 

Attendee Richard Roller, a senior systems engineer with the city of
Knoxville, Tenn., said the use of a mesh network and security cameras
were important innovations. 

Knoxville installed a Wi-Fi network three years ago. Police officers
there use the network to file reports, download neighborhood crime maps
and access criminal databases. Though it has been helpful, Roller said
this city has not seen the dramatic changes that New Orleans has. 

But it only has access points at 28 of its firehouses, so police
officers must drive to a firehouse to send or receive data. In addition,
the city has not deployed security cameras, something that Roller said
could benefit the department. 

New Orleans is also installing Wi-Fi networks in disadvantaged
communities to Internet-enabled PCs in its community centers. It has
also provided free Wi-Fi access in certain economic development zones. 

That is an idea that appealed to attendee Darryl Mason, a network
administrator at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The
university has a Wi-Fi network, but he is looking into working with the
city of Atlanta to deploy Wi-Fi beyond the campus into the community. 

"Anytime the school has an opportunity to work with the city, it's good
for everyone," said Mason. 



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