Students catching a bite to eat in the Memorial Union can waste a few minutes checking e-mail or chatting online, thanks to Iowa State’s wireless efforts.

The university is one of the best in the nation in dealing with wireless technology, according to a poll published this spring by the Intel Corporation.

The poll of the “Most Unwired College Campuses” ranked Iowa State at No. 20 in the nation — higher than schools such as Stanford and Harvard, which were ranked Nos. 68 and 69, respectively.

The survey was sponsored by Intel Corporation and conducted by Bert Sperling, a researcher hired by Intel to conduct the survey. Sperling, who specializes in collecting and analyzing data for the nationally known “Best Places” surveys, said the university was ranked based on the number of wireless “hot spots” on campus, the number of computers on campus and the computer-student ratio.

“The results were also based on the percentage of each college campus that is covered by wireless technology,” he said.

John Kingland, director of telecommunications, said the department and university were very pleased with the recent polling.

“We have a long history as one of the ‘best wired’ campuses, and it is encouraging that in these difficult budgetary times, we are making this level of progress in the rapidly emerging wireless arena,” Kingland said.

There are approximately 300 access points for wireless Internet on campus including classrooms, Parks Library, the Memorial Union and some outdoor spots on Central Campus.

The university spends about $100,000 per year on wireless technology, Kingland said.

In attempts to expand the program, the telecommunications department on campus is also noting new “hot spots” on campus where it hopes to add wireless connection access points in the future.

“The University Information Technology Steering Committee and President Geoffroy have supported building a campus wireless network in public spaces as important emerging information technology infrastructure,” he said.

Sperling said the lack of outdoor access points was the main reason Iowa State was not ranked higher.

“ISU is already doing a great job implementing wireless on their campus. They just need to keep on task to provide complete coverage in all buildings, and outdoor areas,” he said.

University officials are also encouraging improvements to the program because of its fast-growing popularity with students and faculty.

“The speed of wireless connections will increase; security of wireless connections will improve,” Kingland said.

“We will use these technologies to connect smaller buildings at lower cost, network environments difficult to wire at higher speeds, sustain ‘high speed’ Internet connections while moving and possibly connect off-campus buildings to the campus network at lower cost.”

Wireless Internet is available to anyone with a laptop and a university network ID.

“If you are in the vicinity of a wireless access point, you can easily connect to the campus network, check e-mail, connect to a campus server or surf the Web, just like you do with a wired connection,” Kingland said.