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More whining about Wi-Fi

March 16, 2011
By

As many students at Western can attest to, the wireless internet on campus, at times, shaky. It always seems that at the most inopportune times, the wireless internet won’t connect, and if you managed to gain access, it was probably after hours of continuously refreshing the page.

It seems illogical that the wireless internet is so hit and miss at one of the largest university campuses in Canada. Even in buildings like D.B. Weldon Library or the University Community Centre, where one would expect connectivity to be a priority, the wireless is mediocre at best.

In this day in age, when there is an increasing amount of course work posted online and assignments are expected to be handed in using sites like Turnitin.com, any downtime at all is an increasingly serious inconvenience. Western should, at the very least, express to students what the issues are and how they’ll be fixed.

Of course, Western does have a plan for the future.  There is currently a four-year plan in the works that will upgrade the existing internet service. Hopefully this will finally be the miracle that solves the connectivity crisis on campus. But for some students, four years seems like an unacceptably long time to wait, especially because the changes won’t come into effect for this generation of graduates.

With so many students at Western using the wireless internet, the stress on the servers can be overwhelming, and at times this causes the servers to be down for short periods of time. It’s during these times that angry students complain about the terrible service.

But is inconsistent wireless access really the most pressing issue facing students? Or have we just grown too dependant on having to have constant access to the internet no matter where we are. As students, we are confusing the need for internet with a desire for it.

It’s obvious there are issues with wireless access on campus, but we can only hope that in four years all these issues are addressed — or at the very least, Western keeps its students in the loop.

It should be noted that while writing both the editorial board and the accompanying story, the editors both experienced trouble connecting to the internet.

—The Gazette Editorial Board

 

 

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The editorial board is comprised of editors and volunteers from the Gazette. Opinion articles written by the editorial board receive contributions from multiple Gazette writers and represent the paper's position on an issue.

4 Comments

  • Vote -1 Vote +1Sean Previl     says:

    Love the note at the end of the article. As for connectivity issues, I generally have not too much difficult but I’ll admit it often seems that the internet server seems to more often than not act up on MacBooks. I don’t know about PCs as I haven’t had one since my second year, but I never actually experienced difficulties when I had my PC. With Macbook, here at King’s College for example, I get IP Conflicts, and constant disconnects. And with more and more people changing to Macs (don’t deny it, it’s true), I think the ITS needs to work on designing the connectivity to assist Mac users as there are clearly some flaws. I won’t even start about the iPad because I understand the problem with that, but Macbooks on the other hand…they’ve been around long enough to be able to fix what connectivity issues there are.

  • +2 Vote -1 Vote +1Hmm     says:

    “But is inconsistent wireless access really the most pressing issue facing students?”

    What is it with the gazette and rhetorical questions? Is this still high school? Are we still using ‘tricks’ for the sake of creating dramatic effects and pauses? Is a bird in the bush worth two in the hand?

    And, for all intensive purposes, it’s “in this day AND age”, not “in this day in age.”

  • Vote -1 Vote +1Ross     says:

    ITS should in the interim start to provide selective access at peak times, much in the same way that Rogers throttles BitTorrent. At peak times traffic from .uwo addresses like WebCT should be given priority over others. There have been many times where in the library I’ve been waiting ages for the most basic pages to load while seeing someone beside me watch online videos or use MegaUpload. Less access to YouTube would be a fair price to pay for consistent access to basic service

  • Vote -1 Vote +1Jesse M     says:

    Really?? Whining?? There’s a reason why we’re still “whining” gazette, it’s because the inconsistency of the internet on campus is not just intermittent, it’s a regular occurrence. And ITS’ idea of the solution is as inadequate as the servers it provides. The use of the internet is heavily embedded in one’s education at university, it’s how we get our news, how we communicate and collaborate with others, and how we help eliminate the waste of paper. It makes the use of the internet for students a need, not a desire. Something that I desire, is an apology from ITS for their failure on the issue, not a four-year solution that does nothing for the students who feel the effects of it.

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