The chaos of move-in day has ended, but the surge of new students on campus has catalyzed an entirely different genre of chaos — this time for the Division of Information Technology.
Because of smart phones, laptops, iPads and iPods, the spike in the number of wireless devices attempting to configure to the Internet has left the MU Wi-Fi network running at a sluggish pace.
“The issue this year, of course, is that more and more students come with more and more devices that require connections to the Internet,” DoIT Director Terry Robb said. “The wireless controllers in the backbone of our network have a software bug that is only visible when you have such high usage. When the usage is heavy, it causes the controllers to have high CPU usage, in other words, the brains of the machine get overloaded.”
Last year, the wireless network averaged about 900 connections at a time, according to Robb’s estimates. This year that number has soared to the 3,700-connection range.
Although DoIT has attempted to patch the problem with short-term solutions, such as upping the number of temporary IP addresses available from 1,000 to 2,000, students across campus are still taking note of the drop in Internet speed.
“The Mizzou Wireless Wi-Fi has been super spotty all week,” freshman Matt Ingram said. “Finding a connection spot never means anything because it’s not a reliable or consistent source. It’s frustrating because I’ve gone to certain spots on campus with the intention on working on something that requires the Internet and haven’t been able to get on.”
It’s a sentiment that has sparked frustrated tweets directed at [@MUDoIT](http://twitter.com/#!/MUDoIT) from students across campus.
“Wow Mizzou, you have 33,000 students paying tuition and you still do not have reliable wireless Internet,” senior Kurt Davis tweeted.
About 255 connections are available for each building on campus, making highly trafficked areas more prone to slower speeds. DoIT has targeted these problem buildings, such as the MU Student Center, and doubled the number of connections available, according to a Columbia Daily Tribune article.
For some students, though, there appears to be no apparent progress.
“I feel like it’s getting worse,” freshman Maggie Konz said. “The first couple days I was here, I generally got good connections, but lately, number one, I’m getting bad connections and number two, it is so slow. I have to restart my browser half the time before I get on. Today I was trying to add and drop a class and it took me half an hour to do that, when it should take me two minutes. It’s not just about Facebook, it’s a huge hindrance when I need to do schoolwork.”
DoIT took further progress Aug. 24 by installing a work around to increase the speed of connections. There is no concrete date as to when the wireless Internet will run smoothly and consistently.
“We are still working with the vendor to sort it out,” Robb said. “I think service will be up and running, but we may have some issues here or there. I can’t predict at this point when we will have them all solved.”
