A partnership among Purdue, the cities of Lafayette and West Lafayette, the Lafayette and Tippecanoe school corporations, Tippecanoe County and the Purdue Research Foundation will allow for a cost-effective expansion of the campus and community wireless systems and sets the stage for even larger things in the future.
The project — dubbed GLOW, for Greater Lafayette Outdoor Wireless — establishes a framework for building a wireless umbrella over the whole community with a variety of potential applications in operating the cities and promoting economic development.
For now, it is a rare collaboration among a major university and its municipal, county and K-12 school neighbors in which “town and gown” are working together to extend the campus wireless network further into the community, while at the same time affording the cities and their residents, and the schools and their students, expanded wireless service.
GLOW will upgrade and add wireless access points in downtown Lafayette and add access points in West Lafayette along Northwestern Avenue near campus. In the Tippecanoe and Lafayette schools, it will enhance the wireless systems and enable upgrading of data center and information technology and voice telephone infrastructure.