Letting Police Share A Municipal WiFi Network

There are plenty of stories about municipal WiFi networks for police and other public safety officials, and plenty of others about municipal WiFi networks for the public. However, Muniwireless is pointing out that Spokane may be the first that's providing a single network for both kinds of use. I don't know if it's really the first, but it's still interesting. Among the reasons usually given for not doing this is the security of the info traveling across the police network as well as the fact that you don't want the police network to go down because some teens are downloading movies in the park. The Spokane system does away with the first problem by making everyone use a VPN - which could actually increase the second problem in that it slows everything down. It's not entirely clear how they guarantee that public safety gets the bandwidth they need, however.

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