As the first week of classes kicked into gear, many students working to complete online assignments ran into a problem: the lack of a reliable internet connection. A coding bug and increased demand on the campus wireless network resulted in some students being unable to connect to DU’s Internet network, PioneerNet.

University Technology Services pointed to a code bug that caused the network to stop authenticating users as the source of the issues. They said that despite two major campus outages last week, the overall network has been very stable this year.

“The network always goes under a little bit of stress the first week of school,” Assistant Vice Chancellor Rob Rudloff explained. “But we don’t think that was related to the bug in the code, we think that was a unique set of variables that all came together at one time.”

Campus outages of Wi-Fi pose a particularly serious problem for classes that rely heavily on web homework and sites such as Blackboard and Canvas. When Internet access is limited or out, students feel the impact on their coursework.

“Wi-Fi makes it a lot easier to look stuff up easily without being a bother,” Freshman Darren Fleming, a chemistry major from Pflugerville, Texas said. “It helps a lot with homework.”
However, Technology Services explained they are aware of the issue and expect that it will be resolved soon.

“We believe we have isolated the problem,” Rudloff said, “We are working with the vendor on a code fix that should be to us by the weekend.”

While the bug will be fixed, the outage sheds light on the challenges of providing high-speed wireless Internet to both students and faculty across the campus. According to Rudloff, despite having more than 900 access points, the network faces roughly 6,000 mobile devices attempting to access PioneerNet each day, a number that has grown dramatically in recent years, according to UTS.

“The network is designed for one [to] two devices per person. On average students have as many as six devices per student, while faculty and staff are actually averaging between two [and] four devices,” said Rudloff. “So, usage has grown dramatically faster than capacity, we are doing lots of things to catch that up.”

Colleges across the country are facing similar challenges when it comes to on-campus Wi-Fi. According to a survey by ABI research, 79 percent of students view access to Wi-Fi as essential to their college academics. In response to this, colleges across the country have increased their investment by 611 percent over the past six years.

“We are looking constantly at capacity and density,” said Rudloff. “We look at how we increase capacity across campus in areas where we see an increase in usage within budget constraints.”

UTS is currently exploring a range of options to improve wireless on campus, including potentially increasing the number of wireless access points in residence halls to a similar level as those used in hotel rooms, according to Rudloff.

For now, if problems do persist, Rudloff encouraged students to visit support.du.edu for tips and articles on how to get and stay connected to the network. Rudloff also recommended using an Ethernet cord to connect to the network, which provides a faster connection that is less prone to outages compared to Wi-Fi. There are also more than 150 computers in Anderson Academic Commons which can be used for schoolwork and printing.

“Everything is going mobile and everyone expects wireless,” said Rudloff. “We want to provide it but we have to plan for capacity surges.”