Recent complaints and frustrations from students and faculty have arisen due to technical difficulties experienced trying to connect to the UCD Wireless network, across a range of different buildings on campus.
For many, WiFi was unstable and resulted in interference with both teaching and engaging in lessons. On-campus accommodation students were also affected, with reports stating a consistent inability to pick up a solid network connection in their apartments.
Phillip Fischer, Chief Information Officer at UCD explained that the issue was partially due to the busy freshers period and a resulting bug in the software which controls UCD Wireless Networks. “A bug was identified in the software controlling the UCD wireless networks which only manifested itself at the start of term with the very significant increase in utilisation. This resulted in intermittent wi-fi access issues for students and staff”.
He also stated that the issue had been swiftly resolved and that they were working to ensure it wouldn’t happen again “IT Services have implemented a work around to prevent the problem from recurring and thankfully this has addressed the issue and no further connectivity issues have been experienced.”
However, despite this assurance, students are still reporting spotty and unreliable WiFi coverage.
Cara, a second year Masters student in Biomedical Engineering and member of a student society committee, was among many students affected by the connectivity issues and said that “On the top floor of the engineering building it’s not even worth trying to connect anymore. And for all of Freshers Week we had to hotspot just to keep the Google sheet up to date.”
Katie, a second year Architecture student stated that “The recent wifi issues have been very frustrating for me, as someone who both studies and lives on-campus. [...] I have been having nothing but problems with the WiFi on my phone. This is of course very irritating, but it is most frustrating when I am trying to call family and friends in the evening. My apartment on campus has no phone reception, and so I need to use wifi when calling my parents. It has been very inconvenient trying to make a call when the wifi keeps cutting out and disconnecting and even when I get through, the wifi is so slow that sometimes the delay is so bad that it is impossible to carry a conversation. Overall, the wifi issues have been a major nuisance to me, and I hope that they can be fixed soon.”