Many college students returning to school this year have found that their university has upgraded its campus Wi-Fi over the summer. Eastern Illinois University spent over $400,000 connecting Pemberton Hall and the Greek Court. The University of Pittsburgh has extended its Wi-Fi network to include all dorms, allowing grateful students to work anywhere in their room without an Ethernet cable. Now, Fresno State has announced that it will be upgrading its system.
Megan Rupe, of The Collegian at Fresno State, reports that a system overload is responsible for the decision to upgrade the system. Jim Michael, the executive director of technology services at Fresno State, told Rupe that the network sometimes registers more than 15,000 users daily, and, while it works well in most buildings, the network started noticing delays at the end of August. Students quickly started logging complaints, and it became clear that the school needed more than just a fix. One student told Rupe that, while he had not experienced problems in the previous academic year, when he came back to school, he noticed a number of problems. In one instance, he spent 20 minutes trying to log on to the Internet, only to get repeatedly kicked off of it. A quick search in Google (News - Alert) for “Fresno State Wi-Fi” will even yield memes decrying the state of the school’s network.
The new system, Michael says, will allow students to log in once a day, rather than logging in at each new building. He says that this system is especially important, because the new president of Fresno State, Dr. Joseph Castro, who officially began his tenure as president on August 1, envisions a future of students using tablets in the classroom. The changes to the network will cost the school less than $20,000 per year, which, compared to Eastern Illinois University’s whopping $400,000 upgrade, is a bargain.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson