Tech Forum

In August of 2011 it was announced (https://tech.lds.org/index.php/ldstech/ ... tinghouses) that in 2012 members would be able to use the building wireless internet by using their LDS Account login. Here we are 2 years later and still this feature is nowhere to be found and I am unable to find any announcements or release dates or anything.
We received the newer 881W firewalls and the 1041N wireless AP’s in all of the buildings in our Stake in early 2012 and they of course all have the same SSID and password which has gotten around to most members and has caused issues with bandwidth and available IP’s etc.
Can someone please provide an update to the matter on what is taking so long and when we can expect it?

Thank you,

Travis Graham
Stake Technology Specialist

Travis, I don't have the link in front of me, but without going into a lot of detail, a church employee let us know that project was scrapped. As far as I know, there are no plans to pick it back up again in the future.

Interesting. Thanks for the info Mike.

I hope they change things so that we are able to change the SSID or atleast password on the firewalls so that we don't have to call support to have them change them all the time.

Meetinghouse Internet and future solutions are one of the topics for the upcoming LDSTech broadcast on August 2 at noon (MDT). The broadcast is titled "Improving Meetinghouse Technology." Here is a link to watch it live. There will be time at the end of the broadcast as well to ask Church product managers these types of questions. You can ask questions using Twitter or at pollev.com/mhtech. I would highly recommend attending the broadcast to learn more about what the Church's ICS department is working on.

Ya I just saw that today. I will certainly be tuning in and have my question handy

It was in a previous tech broadcast where the information about permanently scrapping the project was made. The best decision ever by ICS in my opinion. If I go to a church meetinghouse in my travels I want to log in just like anyone else.

I think we're still a ways off from having enough bandwidth to allow everyone to do what they want in every building. Somehow we need to find a way to prioritize legitimate church use and not let it get interrupted because a group wants to swap favorite YouTube videos out in the hallway.

My understanding is that the prior effort to use LDS Accounts was scrapped due to serious implementation flaws, not because the desire went away.

russellhltn wrote:My understanding is that the prior effort to use LDS Accounts was scrapped due to serious implementation flaws, not because the desire went away.

That wasn't communicated to the general public in the broadcast, so known only to a select few, if true. It came on the heels or just before the announcement of Come Follow Me Youth Curriculum, which greatly expanded the 'Sunday need' for use of the bandwidth. It seems the solution would result in so much overhead that to me it made no sense to continue.

JohnShaw wrote:That wasn't communicated to the general public in the broadcast, so known only to a select few, if true.

Correct.

JohnShaw wrote:It seems the solution would result in so much overhead that to me it made no sense to continue.

Close enough. But my point is that it wasn't any high-up "we don't need/want to do that" but a problem in implementation. So I wouldn't rule out a reappearance. It's just a matter of the problem being big enough to be worth doing it - at least for selected buildings that have limited bandwidth options.

I was able to ask the question during the recent LDSTech broadcast- asking them to confirm if the intent to add LDS Account authentication for Building Internet was indeed gone. They answered the question by stating that they completed their testing for the implementation of the project and then took it to "the Brethren" where they decided not to implement the LDS Account authentication. No reason was given. But they did state that the project was not for nothing- as they used some of the things they learned and developed in other tools or projects. They also stated that it could always come back in the future- you never know.

So for now- yes... no LDS Account Authentication for Bldg Internet coming...