The Uni has been upgrading the University Wi-Fi network to cope with increased student and staff demand.
The Uni have increased internet bandwidth, whatever that means, and also completed the installation of wireless in all the Residential Colleges in time for the start of semester one, said the Director of Information Technology Services Mike Harte, and “the project has now moved onto the College of Education buildings and planning is underway for the buildings along Castle Street”.
Harte said use of the wireless network has sky-rocketed even just over the past year as more wireless access points have been added and people increase the number of devices they bring to Uni. Critic interviewed some students and the average number of devices brought to Uni was two per person.
The statistics Harte provided are actually pretty interesting. He said “the number of devices connecting concurrently to the University wireless network has been consistently peaking at over 45,000 for the past few months, with a peak of 48,821 in the first week of March 2019. This compares to a device connection count of 33,334 a year ago, an increase of around 46%.”
“The wireless network has had 1,040 access points added over the past 12 months which represents around 29% growth. Currently, the wireless network has 4,681 access points as of mid-April 2019,” said Harte.
Students Critic spoke to were ambivalent on the topic of Uni Wi-Fi, with a common sentiment being “it’s pretty good”. One student said, “I have never really [had] problems with it,” while another said, “it’s annoying that every building you go into you have to re-sign in”.
Spots where students thought the Wi-Fi was slow included the second floor of Central Library and outside. Another student said the Wi-Fi “gets real busy around exam time”.
One student Critic spoke to said “I didn’t know there WAS university wifi, I’ve been using the desktops all year!”