Friday, October 19, 2007

Date: November 16, 2006

To: Management

Cc: Officers

From: Sanny R. Sison

Subject: WIFI Services at F-Mall and W-Gate

______________________________________________________________________________________

Last week, we conducted an RF survey at F-Mall and W-Gate. The result of which provided us with a proof that numerous uncontrolled WIFI signals, identified to be from a variety of established Access Points (APs) and different WIFI devices (PC/laptop, phones, and PDAs), do exist. The reports generated by our instrument are attached herewith for your reference.

All these Access Points (APs) are individually administered by their owners and may not be centrally managed for our control. Most of them are privately protected by passwords intended to authenticate their expected customers, while some others are not secured and may be accessed by anyone inside or near the mall. It is estimated that those wireless services have been around for more than a year when WIFI devices became commercially available in many computer stores. With the fast proliferation of new and more sophisticated WIFI-certified products everywhere, the numbers are estimated to grow as more people are also learning to use it for both business and leisure.

The situation, in reality, indicates that a new medium to do business has arrived and benefiting those already using or serving it. However, without a qualified system to police this unauthorized WIFI services, we freely allow the public to do business in the two key areas inside the City and also lose the potential to generate income from regulating them. Technically, this could also cause various network and security problems such as frequency interference and unauthorized access to private networks.

Whereas, the existing cables inside the mall had also been reported to be in an unsound physical condition (the average lifespan of a network cable is only up to 10 years), we recommend to position the company in a ready stance to support all current and future network-based services by establishing a backup to the deteriorating structured cabling. And whereas, WIFI is an easy and proven alternative to wired networks and a very suitable marketing and income-generating tool, we urge the implementation of a secured, centrally-managed, and billable WIFI system for both F-Mall and W-Gate as soon as possible.

In line with this recommendation, we would like to inform you that NSA, the company that is implementing WIFI at various local malls and food chain outlets, had earlier been requested to present products and means to counter rogue signals and explore the income-generating potential of WIFI services.

With your permission, I can arrange a presentation of their proposal to you, and to allow us to carry out this project.

Thank you very much.

Yours truly,

Sanny Sison
Senior Network Engineer

Note: Excited about the project, the testing of Trapeze WiFi in both F-Mall and W-Gate was approved. But due to other ongoing projects, the "WiFi Project" will be an undertaking in 2008.

Sir,

It has been observed that when there are outages, escalation and reporting have been inconsistent and oftentimes erroneous. For example, an outage was escalated to Telco without calling first the branch, or an advisory was sent without initiating a first-hand troubleshooting or with insufficient information. This causes delays and miscommunication.

To address this, I attached herewith a proposal for standardized, positive approach to outage escalation and restoration to be observed & followed in all outages monitored on our WhatsUp monitoring tool.

For your approval, please.

Sanny Sison

Note: The Outage Escalation Procedure I drafted was adopted for official use company-wide.