Residence internet problems

Alex Solak – The Aquinian

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Some students living in residence this year are less than pleased with their internet service this year.

Frustrations over slow connection speeds and internet service cutting out came to a head this month. Citing major problems, over 140 students living in residence have joined a Facebook group urging the university to “Fix the Internet in St. Thomas University Residence”.

Besides slow speeds, sometimes taking minutes to load basic pages, some students have reported complete failures for hours at a time.

The problems have affected some students academically.

“When I was trying to change my courses the internet screwed up, and because of that, by the time I got it to work the class was full,” wrote Amber Delorey.

Jordan Rattray is having problems as well.

“I wasn’t able to get on stu.ca all last week, I had to do all of my stuff for online on campus,” he said.

The internet connection in residence was particularly bad this semester because of an attempted upgrade of the system over the winter break.

The company that runs the residence internet system, Point of Presence, installed a new, high end controller from HP. The wireless controller is what provides the final access to the internet. It was to replace the multiple, aging controllers that were already being used.

The new controller was rated for 2000 users, but as soon as students returned and signed on, it started to seize up. Point of Presence was forced to reinstall the old controllers for upper campus, while Forest Hill remain on the new controller.