Washington University students living both on and off campus will experience changes to Internet access as a result of new changes put into effect by Washington University’s Information Services and Technology team.

Included in the team’s fall semester upgrades is the addition of wireless Internet access in the school’s off-campus residential apartments.

According to Student Technology Services (STS) director Barbara Braun, the apartments owned by the Office of Residential Life received standard Washington University wireless. The University hired Charter Communications to connect buildings owned by Quadrangle Housing, which includes Waterman Court.

“I’ve gotten good emails from the students saying that they’re really happy to have off-campus wireless, which is great,” Braun said. “The main thing ResLife was looking for was a similar experience across all of the residential space, and now they’ve got that.”

Senior Lucy Yan, who is living in off-campus housing for a second year, noted that the wireless connection is reliable. Additionally, she believes that students will be able to interact with others more after gaining wireless capabilities as compared to last year, when she was limited by a wired connection.

“[My friends and I] could not go out to our living room to study together,” Yan said. “We were isolated in our own rooms because that was where our Ethernet cords worked. It decreased social interaction.”

Information Services and Technology also upgraded on-campus residential wireless by optimizing the wireless access points to rest on the same channel for each floor, thus preventing the channels from overlapping by alternating channels between floors.

“Think of it as when you turn your radio on to listen to music,” said Braun. “Sometimes when you turn your radio dial over too much, you get that bleed-over from the other stations.”

To keep the different channels from being in conflict, the Internet access points will only see the other points on their channel, and not the ones on channels from other floors, explained Braun.

Sophomore Arya Parhar has not noticed a significant difference in wireless speed or reliability, but she believes that STS provides adequate technological support for students.

“In general, they’re doing a pretty good job,” she said. “We had trouble hooking up our cable today, and they had someone over in 10 minutes to fix it.”

Braun also encouraged students to communicate directly with STS concerning any wireless or other technology issues.

“I can’t respond to a conversation at a lunch table if I’m not sitting there,” Braun said. “Be sure to let STS know, either by emailing [email protected] or talking to your STC [Student Technology Coordinator]. The main thing is feedback—we’ve got to have feedback.”