Policy Question: How widely does your stake distribute the password for LDSAccess?

[lmemmott]

Wireless has been recently installed in one of our buildings. My question isn't of a technical nature but instead around policy. The guidance that came from church headquarters was:

"Stake Presidents and District Presidents should determine who they want to provide with this password and how they want to manage its distribution. These leaders should use discretion to ensure that wireless Internet access is used by those who will use it responsibly."

So obviously the stake presidency get's to decide so I'd like to know what has worked for other stakes. Do you give the password out to anyone who asks? Just the family history class? Just stake and ward leaders? Nobody? If you could, give a few details about how you came to the decision you made.

Thanks so much for your time,
LM

[rbeede]

Our stake had the wireless networks setup to use custom a SSID (not LDSAccess) so they could change the password when they wanted. It is given out only to leaders especially for some of the ward buildings that weren't able to get very fast Internet speeds (limited and expensive ISP choices).

[aebrown]

Our stake's official policy is that we give the wireless access key to the bishops, who then decide who should have the key for valid Church purposes. That information was rather closely held for a while, but over time, there have been enough people who have had valid uses, and enough friends of those people (with whom I imagine the key was shared "confidentially") that the key is now known rather widely.

We just recently got the new 881W firewalls, so now we have enough IP addresses; until then, there were far too many users for the 32 dynamic IP addresses available in the buildings.

[jdlessley]

We just recently got the new 881W firewalls, so now we have enough IP addresses; until then, there were far too many users for the 32 dynamic IP addresses available in the buildings.

Don't you mean 52 dynamic IP addresses for the 881W? Still, that may not be enough for some locations.

[aebrown]

Don't you mean 52 dynamic IP addresses for the 881W? Still, that may not be enough for some locations.

No, I said "until then" -- when I mentioned 32 dynamic IP addresses, I was referring to our previous situation with the PIX 501, where we indeed had 32 dynamic IP addresses.

Now with the 881W, we have the base 52 dynamic IP addresses, plus an additional range that the GSC configured for us. I don't have the exact information with me, but it added well over 100 additional dynamic IP addresses on top of the 52 base.

[sammythesm]

Our stake's official policy is that we give the wireless access key to the bishops, who then decide who should have the key for valid Church purposes. That information was rather closely held for a while, but over time, there have been enough people who have had valid uses, and enough friends of those people (with whom I imagine the key was shared "confidentially") that the key is now known rather widely.

Same thing here. We had one building in our stake with WiFi for a long time (it had an institute building built onto it). When we added WiFi to the other buildings, I was startled at how many people already knew the password / had it stored in their devices from just that one building set up. Since we have the LDSAccount authentication coming down the pipeline soon, we just decided to let it go for now (not try to restrict the wireless password) and rely on the church's filtering and logging.

[harddrive]

Wireless has been recently installed in one of our buildings. My question isn't of a technical nature but instead around policy. The guidance that came from church headquarters was:

"Stake Presidents and District Presidents should determine who they want to provide with this password and how they want to manage its distribution. These leaders should use discretion to ensure that wireless Internet access is used by those who will use it responsibly."

So obviously the stake presidency get's to decide so I'd like to know what has worked for other stakes. Do you give the password out to anyone who asks? Just the family history class? Just stake and ward leaders? Nobody? If you could, give a few details about how you came to the decision you made.

Thanks so much for your time,
LM

In my stake, we allow the leadership of the ward to have access and the entire stake leadership. Now we use the church SSID and password, so if someone comes in from another stake that knows the password, then they can give it out and I can't control that, but I can't just give it out.

[dfdavis]

In my stake, we allow the leadership of the ward to have access and the entire stake leadership. Now we use the church SSID and password, so if someone comes in from another stake that knows the password, then they can give it out and I can't control that, but I can't just give it out.

That is the same situation that I have in all 7 buildings. Its a secret..but everybody knows. Please excuse this question, I am a church convert. Why is it that no one ever gets told ..."no"?

[aebrown]

That is the same situation that I have in all 7 buildings. Its a secret..but everybody knows. Please excuse this question, I am a church convert. Why is it that no one ever gets told ..."no"?

At least in my stake, it's not accurate to say that "no one ever gets told 'no.'" Our stake and ward leaders have told people "no" when they've asked to know the wireless key for their own use ("I just want to be able to check my email when I'm at Church") and we've also said "no" when youth leaders have suggested they would give out the key to their youth for a FamilySearch Indexing class or Personal Progress -- but in those latter cases we've brought in a separate wireless router for the specific activity. But nonetheless, over time, the key has become widely known. So there's not much point in saying "no" at this point.

[sammythesm]

Why is it that no one ever gets told ..."no"?

That's easy. It's because no one wants to offend anyone else. It's the same reason why, in Sunday School, when the crazy brother opens his mouth and starts spouting false doctrine, the teacher is supposed to say "thank you for your thoughts" and move on, rather than saying "that's just wrong and you are crazy."

But back on a technological note, for me, maintaining secrecy around the WiFi password is just a losing battle. We rotate out clerks, bishopric counselors, and ward council members (people with a legitimate need to know the password) so frequently that after a year or two, more than half the ward would have the "secret" password.

I haven't observed any real detriment to our building connectivity, or any new obsession with checking handheld devices during Sacrament Meeting. I think most members have a good sense of what is appropriate use and what is not.

Also - there's a real benefit to the non technical user with being able to walk into any church building anywhere and have your mobile just link right up to the wireless.

This password thing will resolve itself once we have the captive portal/LDSAccount authentication later this year, so I don't think it's really worth worrying about.