Waivering Wireless at the University of Rhode Island by Gabrielle Chase

 

 

KINGSTON, R.I. - Wireless Internet has become a staple food for a growing brain of a student. Older generations will tell you that in order to research for a project, they referred to the library for a book on their topic. Now, students of the millennial generation rely on their wifi for just about everything.

 

         No different are those millennials at the University of Rhode Island, where the wifi is heavily relied on for communication, social media, entertainment, and most importantly, schoolwork.

 

         Unfortunately, the program intended for students to connect to and use campus-wide, referred to as “URI_Secure”, has a reputation of being difficult to connect to. URI_Secure has even been known to be elusive in the University Library, the hub for all students trying to get their work done quietly and efficiently. 

 

        Sophomore communications student Amber Beech is one of many people who are concerned with the reliability of the Internet.

 

        “Every time I go on the computer to do a project or anything, it just doesn’t usually work. So I think they should put something in place of it, because it’s just not working the way it is,” says Beech.

 

        Information Technology Services, whose offices are located on the second floor of the University Library, are well aware of the current issues with the wireless.

 

          Garry Bozylinsky, chief information officer of IT, spoke in regards to the current status of URI_Secure and the school’s plan to enhance its reliability.

 

          “One of the challenges we have at the University is the wireless demand is growing geometrically. Just since the spring of 2014, we’ve just about doubled the number of users in the library,” says Bozylinsky.

 

           The main concern facing URI IT is the ever-growing influx of students who come with multiple devices such as laptops, phones, and tablets, all of which are using the same access ports.

 

           “We’re well over 13,000 concurrent users on campus for our wireless systems, and the bandwidth keeps going up every year by fifty percent,” says Bozylinsky.

 

            Hiring people to maintain this wireless server promises an improvement to URI_Secure. The frustration there is that students are paying copious amount of tuition money to pay for these fixes, but they have yet to happen.

 

 “There’s too many people that are unhappy with it,” says Beech. “It’s just not reliable enough to be a constant system for the school with the amount of money we’re paying.”

 

            An upcoming grant may be the answer to these qualms.

 

            “Right now we have plans for a $50,000 upgrade in the library which will just about double the wireless access points and capabilities here, hopefully by January for the spring semester. We’re looking not only for money, but for the opportunity to hire a contractor who’ll help us with the work. That’s our goal at this point,” Bozylinsky says.

 

            With these impending improvements on the horizon, the current consensus that URI_Secure isn’t reliable enough for students to use on a regular basis may be drawing to a close.