Sabrina Spence | Student Life

A sign on the South 40 placed by STS shows a QR code linked to a survey about Wi-Fi on campus.

After students reported slow and unreliable Wi-Fi during the first half of the semester, Student Technology Services (STS) and Washington University Information Technology (WUIT) have taken steps to improve Wi-Fi on the Danforth Campus and South 40.

After looking into the issue, STS and WUIT discovered hardware and configuration issues within the University’s Wi-Fi infrastructure. To gather sufficient data to identify the problem, STS Director Sherry Holmes and her team posted QR codes around campus that linked to a survey about the Wi-Fi and employed the help of Student Technology Coordinators to observe the connection in residential halls first-hand.

“We really took in a wide variety of people: student technicians that work for Sherry to get their experience as well as engineers really doing a lot of detailed analysis,” said Craig Hager, the director of university network planning and services. “We went about it at several different angles to get the most comprehensive data we possibly could. We did find some issues with hardware that we needed to address, and we made those adjustments.”

“We believe now that the wireless stability and performance has improved greatly, and we continue to monitor the situation closely,” Holmes said. 

The fix has been long awaited by Danforth Campus students, many of whom have been struggling with campus Wi-Fi for several months now. 

“It’ll just go out randomly,” senior Mary Frances West said. “I’ll be connected to it and then it’ll just disconnect and then it won’t want to reconnect. Sometimes it’ll take like five to ten minutes.”

“It’s really frustrating if I’m sitting in class when this happens,” freshman Gabi Skilling said. “Everyone else can be discussing something while we’re using computers, and I can’t pull up the document. I have to wait five or 10 minutes, or I have to use data on my phone and connect to a hotspot.”

Freshman Sam Singer also reported frequently having to resort to using cellular data.

“With my computer and my phone just like basically anywhere I go — a lot in the dorm — it disconnects and I’m on LTE for who knows how long,” Singer said.

Students expressed having particular difficulties in the Olin Business School buildings, the DUC and when outside or transitioning between buildings. The issue seemed to be fairly consistent across networks, with students reporting connection problems with eduroam, wustl-2.0, wustl-guest-2.0 and wustl-encrypted-2.0.

While these inconveniences have characterized the first half of the semester for many students, some said the improvements made by Holmes’ and Hager’s teams have been tangible. 

“I was having trouble early on in the semester. I haven’t really had any problems since Fall Break that I remember distinctly,” sophomore Carson Codel said. “If it was, it was only for like a minute or two.”

“I think it’s gotten better,” sophomore Shreya Patel said. “Yesterday I got kicked off, but it hasn’t happened as much as it used to.” 

Hager also said that some of the biggest challenges to improving connectivity is the sheer volume of devices on campus and the varying ages of these devices. 

“The real challenge that we all face is making sure we have a wireless environment that’s supportive of all technologies to the best of our ability,” Hager said. “We have to keep up with technology, we have to keep up with infrastructure and sometimes the extremely old hardware or those handheld devices may be more of a challenge to get connected. It’s always a constant improvement. We’re never done.”

Nevertheless, Holmes and Hager are confident that their adjustments have improved the Wi-Fi’s stability and performance. They encourage any students who are still experiencing difficulties to reach out to STS or WUIT.

“We’ll never know where problems are unless people report them,” said Holmes. “We want to make sure that we are addressing the issues. This is your student experience, but we need it from you.”