Op-Ed: Slow wifi and internet outages

by: Jennifer Rehm
edited by Brian Carey

Slow wifi is causing problems for students all across campus.

Students on campus have already experienced two instances where the wireless connection on campus shut down, and several days of slow internet. The poor wireless connection we have had in only a month of being on campus has raised student’s concerns of “will it get better?” 

Tom Tolbert, director of Information Technology, said, “The system has a load balance system, one of the controllers had taken control of all the access points, so it caused everything to slow down.” The IT team realized there was a problem when they kept receiving multiple complaints from students. “We made a number of upgrades, which was why when we started getting all these complaints we were surprised,” said Tolbert.
Tolbert was aware of all the issues that were happening in residential buildings. “The other thing going on down at Lakeview was a cable was out for a while. We had a lightning strike that happened in July. This severely damaged not only cables at Lakeview but also Campus Safety,” said Tolbert.

 Equipment had been damaged because of this lightning strike and IT had just finished replacing those cables around two weeks ago. They are also trying to fix the problem with new network switches that was supposed to be done over the summer but wasn’t completed on time. 

Tolbert stated that there is a solution to this problem. Tolbert said “Students can provide us specific information about when and where the outages are happening, contact the help desk and we can build a picture trying to figure out what the problem is.”