This semester, Wi-Fi outages have swept across campus, leaving students without a way to take online quizzes, access class resources or use their laptops. The Office of Information Technology found the Wi-Fi outages were due to a bug in the newly-upgraded system.
Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer Marc Hoit sent an email to students Sept. 21 that said OIT was looking into the issue.
“In recent weeks, we have experienced recurring wireless outages that have impacted our daily activities and operations,” Hoit said in the email. “ … The Office of Information Technology is in constant contact with its wireless vendor to identify the root cause.”
However, Wi-Fi issues persisted. Some students began using hotspots from their mobile devices, which had drawbacks — particularly, draining a phone’s battery life.
Marissa Fahy, a fourth-year studying English, said the outage was frustrating.
“I would ask people every day, ‘Were you able to get on?’ And some people on the right side of my class would say, ‘Yes,’ left side [would] say, ‘No,’” Fahy said. “ … And it was really frustrating because I have everything on my electronic devices because I have a visual disability. And so I couldn’t access certain things without using the hotspot on my phone, which takes up a lot of power and costs money after a certain amount of time.”
Hoit said OIT found the issue was due to increased stress on a newly-upgraded Wi-Fi system.
“An access point — the things with the antennas you see scattered all over campus — is the piece of equipment that connects to your cell phone that services the Wi-Fi,” Hoit said. “Turns out that those are all fully interconnected into a system so that we can balance. And the problem with Wi-Fi is that Wi-Fi has certain channels, and two next to each other can’t be on the same channel because the radio waves interfere with each other. So you have to balance them all.”
An issue with the access points wasn’t caught quickly enough, so the Wi-Fi remained updated from the summer into the fall semester.
“The software had been running for four months,” Hoit said. “Now that students came back, there was so much demand on the system, a bug in the system that nobody knew about was found out. It took us a while to say that, ‘We can’t fix this.’”
Hoit said OIT worked to remedy the issue.
“We went back to the previous version of the software, and we’re waiting for the defense,” Hoit said. “The team is diligent; they work 24/7. We have monitoring to look for it. This is the first time this level of problem has ever happened.”
Hoit said he suggests seeking direct Wi-Fi connections on campus if you can’t use a hotspot.
“The alternative is to go to a campus machine that’s plugged in,” Hoit said. “That’s the best alternative. If your laptop has an Ethernet plug or a little dongle, carry the dongle around and go to one of the labs.”
Since finding the bug, Hoit said this issue would be unlikely to happen again.
“Don’t be fearful again,” Hoit said. “Because it was the anomaly that was the problem, not the other way around. … My team is going to be extra cautious because of that incident because that’s never happened before.”
