Industry:
Public Safety

Situation:
Central Point Police Department was in need of a solution which allowed for roaming across multiple networks while also allowing access to important information needed on the spot - anywhere. They needed a CDPD answer that would give their mobile data computers connectivity with the Medford CAD system and information without compromising security.

Solution:
NetMotion Mobility XE was added to their wireless setup to maintain reliable and secure access to their data and applications. Best of all, no changes to their existing software and hardware were needed.

Environment:
NetMotion Mobility Server installed on Windows 2000 server.

NetMotion Mobility Client installed on Windows 2000 laptops equipped with ORiNOCO WLAN cards.

Benefits:
With NetMotion Mobility, officers have fast, reliable access to the applications they depend on, they don't have to worry about losing their network connections, and the sensitive data they send and receive is kept secure.

Central Point Police Department

"We have to work smarter and maximize our time with fewer officers. NetMotion helps us get where we need to be with the information we need to have."
Chief Mike Sweeny, Central Point, Oregon Police Department

"In a small city we're more visible. Our citizens want to know their police officers and expect them to respond to anything, anytime. We need be up close and personal. Communications are extremely important."

Sweeney: We're right next to Medford. We contract with them for dispatch services. They selected CDPD, so we were looking for a CDPD answer that would give our mobile data computers connectivity with the Medford CAD system. The question was, how do you make these systems work when your applications expect one IP to be there all the time and it's roaming around between two networks? Feeney Wireless of Eugene, Oregon turned us on to NetMotion Mobility and it was a done deal!

"Our officers have seamless roaming across multiple networks, including a Cisco wireless system throughout the city. They’re completely unaware of whether they've roamed onto a high speed network or a slow speed network."
Arlen Hatlestad, IT Manager of SORC 9-1-1

Hatlestad: The officers' application is also unaware of what kind of network it's on. Our number one concern was to have the application running in the car on the MDCs (mobile data computers) and not worry about switching networks—we wanted that part done elsewhere. NetMotion Mobility provides that by assigning virtual IP addresses. Number two was encryption of the packets sent over either of the wireless systems, whether it's CDPD (now GPRS) or the 802.11 Cisco system. Security is a big issue with law enforcement. NetMotion Mobility gives us secure encryption and authentication between the MDC client and our Mobility server. It handles all of law enforcement database traffic between us and our contract dispatch center.

"You know what I like? I like the fact that NetMotion Wireless actually had a product when they sold it to me—not something the engineers were dreaming up."

Sweeney: Other companies had been trying to sell me stuff that, once they had my order, they were going to go create! NetMotion's product did what they said it was going to do. I wasn’t a test-bed for it. NetMotion's technical people were extremely helpful. Their upgrades available through the web are a preferred way to go—it makes it so easy to open an account, download what you need, install it and go.

MEET THE MOVERS
Life in a town of some 15,000 residents has its advantages, but even a community of this size is not completely emergency- or crime-free.

In the shadow of much larger Medford, this small southern Oregon town just 35 miles north of the California border is on a heavily traveled route that rolls north and south through the flat bottomlands of the scenic Rogue River Valley. Its population and policing challenges expand and contract with the flow of tourism that overlays its basic agricultural, timber, and retail trade economy.

Chief Mike Sweeney was quick to put into practice ideas about policing developed earlier in 26 years with the much larger Medford force—many focused on communications and technologies now needed to support a force so small that the department could feel it when one or two officers quit or retired. Working with IT consultant Arlen Hatlestad, he installed the area's first MDCs (mobile date computers) in department patrol vehicles. He also created an extensive wireless network blanketing the town with 11 stand-alone 802.11 systems, negotiating with schools, power companies, the Central Point Parks Department, and the Grange Co-op, which owns a grain elevator (the highest point in town), for placement of antennas. NetMotion Mobility turned out to be a critical linking element in his plan.

Today officers can move from one end of Central Point to another, using any of the city's networks—there is coverage from a Pacific Power & Light support pole with a Cisco solar repeater to the north, to an antenna on the city-owned reservoir in the south, with a signal from atop the Grange elevator in-between—all without losing connectivity or crashing applications.

It all works. And, as Chief Sweeny says, "Without NetMotion we wouldn't have been able to do it."