Written by Carly Kester
Ever since students who live in West Apartments returned to school, the Internet has been unreliable. The Harding department of Information Systems and Technology is working on trying to fix the Internet problem there.
According to Keith Cronk, vice president of Information Systems and Technology, the technology in the apartments was upgraded over the summer and worked just fine at the time.
“Upgraded technology for the dorms was tested over the summer and the tests were successful,” Cronk said. “However when the load increased after the students returned, the system stopped working.”
Cronk also said there had been no way of doing a real test for the system because it was installed during the summer, and nobody was around to use it.
Students living in West Apartments are fully aware of the system failure and said they are tired of dealing with unreliable Internet.
“At first there was no Internet at all,”senior Nathan Wilhelm said. “Then I had to go pay $50 for a new device to make it work, then I had to pay more money for a phone cord.”
According to Cronk, the devices needed to fix the connection problems are no longer made, and DormNet has had to wait on the manufacturer for a solution.
Students who have tried to install routers to bypass the slow connection have also run into problems.
“We hooked our wireless router up, and DormNet quarantined it … and now that it’s fixed it moves really slow and certain sites won’t even come up. It’s really frustrating,” junior Taelor Aebi said.
Senior Brett Jones ran into a similar issue last semester.
“Last semester I had a problem with my router, and DormNet fixed it,” Jones said. “This semester I sent it to them so it would work, but about 15 minutes later it shut off because of somebody else’s router that hadn’t been configured right.”
Cronk explained the problem by saying, “People who try to install their own routers should bring them to DormNet; otherwise they get quarantined. If they are not set up correctly, it is possible for them to provide access for hackers.”
Students said they were especially frustrated with the unreliable connection when they had to access important homework assignments online.
“It stops working randomly, and I almost failed a quiz because of it, and it’s so slow that I don’t even bother using it anymore,” Wilhelm said.
Cronk said that problems like this are common, especially in school settings, and he has confidence the Internet will be running soon.
“We have the solution in place now, and once it starts working it’ll be like high speed Internet,” Cronk said.
