Photo by Sergey Zolkin on Unsplash
By Theo Klinger, Staff Writer
Have you noticed that somehow the Wi-Fi on campus is somehow worse than the Wi-Fi you have at home? The worst part is that I don’t remember it being this bad.
I would play games on my PlayStation console to de-stress after a hard day without things being difficult to load. Now that I have a gaming computer, I thought it would be even better to use while on campus since it is faster. I was completely wrong, and it only took the first week of classes for me to become enraged by how slow the internet was suddenly.
I understand that there are a lot of students on campus, and all of us at the same time are doing things such as schoolwork, streaming shows or movies, and gaming with friends or alone on multiplayer games.
However, at the same time I personally think that the university should be prepared for this and pay for the proper coverage, so it does not affect people who are trying to relax after a hard day. Not to mention, if someone is doing a highly important online quiz or exam that is timed, it’s terrifying to have to wait for things to load while at the same time, you are being timed and it is constantly counting down.
My roommate was doing a timed quiz, and it was a kind of quiz where they had to show all their work for the equations. Instead of typing everything out in the textbox that had been provided, they decided to try a faster method of emailing themselves the picture of their work to move forward with the quiz even faster than taking the time to figure out the text box.
Since the Wi-Fi was being incredibly slow, by the time they were able to receive the email and place it, the quiz had already timed out and was automatically submitted. That was what caused them to fail yet another exam because the Wi-Fi loaded things very slowly.
Professors do not take Wi-Fi acting up as an excuse to not complete work for a timed quiz, so it isn’t like they can ask for another chance. I personally think this should be a thing that is understood rather than pushed to the side as the student not being prepared for the quiz, but I am only a student while they are the professor.
The past few days that I had free time from homework and projects, I decided to spend time on my favorite games. I ended up not being able to play because the internet was so slow that I was teleporting everywhere.
In the first week, it was not a big problem, but with the ping being 500-1000 it is not playable. Usually for video games, you would have to have a 25-60 ping. Imagine something like 500 on a game that you are going against other people around the world. I would like to add that using my hotspot on my iPhone is way better than any of the internet options on campus.
I have decided that I am going to take the initiative to talk to staff on campus about these problems, because I really do not want it to affect anyone else on campus like it affected me and many peers. I hope that this is only a short-lived problem, especially since the internet has never been this bad to deal with in my three years spent on campus.
