Students across campus have been taking note of the Wi-Fi and network problems since coming back to campus on Jan. 2. Wi-Fi connections have been dropping, error messages are common and ITS emails have been daily. The culmination of problems has led to issues in and out of the classroom.
Over D-term, ITS installed over 250 new access points across campus, focusing on Schneller, Rall and Geiger Halls to help improve student access to Wi-Fi. When the installations were made the maximum number of access points was exceeded, and that’s where the issues began.
In addition to that, the sudden volume of Wi-Fi users caused widespread connectivity issues across campus. Todd Flesher, director of technology infrastructure at ITS, explained that in order to work, a server needs to give each person their own address within the network.
“Because that couldn’t work it makes it work like a wireless problem when in reality it was a backend infrastructure problem,” said Flesher.
ITS worked over the weekend to stabilize the problem, resulting in the email students received Monday stating the problem had been resolved. The problem then quickly returned.
As these problems continue, students are having issues both in and out of the classroom when it comes to daily life and academic work. Online books, assignment submissions and digital note taking are affected by Wi-Fi issues and students have been noticing.
Dylan Obrochta, ’21, who has classes that rely heavily on internet access said, “I have been able to connect to the Wi-Fi, but the first few days when getting acclimated to classes I’ve never taken before — one class is fifty percent online — it’s been troublesome. Yeah, I’ve been able to connect but it’s been slow, or on and off, or I have to log in every 10 minutes.”
He emphasized how inefficient it makes things, and he constantly has to worry about whether his last work had been saved or not.
Other students like Isaac Thornsen, ’22, stated how important it is to have access to Wi-Fi due to limited data plans for his cellphone, “When I have nineteen days left and 75 percent data used, it’s an awful side-effect to have, because I need to do work, contact my parents and things like that.”
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Students have said that restarting their computer or forgetting the network and re-connecting has helped fix the problem. ITS said that sometimes that’s the best bet. Other students, like Alyssa Gibson, ’21, have been connecting computers to wired internet access in their dorm rooms as a temporary fix.
ITS has been working diligently to fix the issue. This includes during school hours when students need internet access the most. There is a planned full-network outage on Jan. 11 from 2-4 p.m.
Flesher said as unfortunate as it is to have to shut down the network during school hours, the problem won’t be resolved until that happens.
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If students experience internet outage or connection issues, email ITS at helpdesk@noctrl.edu.
Written by Patrick Schaefer, Sam Creadon and Bailee Van Camp.
