Wi-Fi causes problems for Langara students

If Langara students are having trouble accessing Wi-Fi on campus, they have been largely suffering in silence, according to the Langara IT department.

Posts about the troublesome Wi-Fi have been popping up on the Langara confessions and official Langara Facebook pages recently, with students complaining it’s too slow or doesn’t work at all.

“In the past few days it seems to have been slowing down – I’m not really sure why – slowing down to the point where you can’t even load a web page or anything,” said business and photography student Cameron Bower. “You leave it for five minutes and come back and it still hasn’t loaded.”

One student, Suzanne Paul, tweeted, “The Wi-Fi at school is so bad I actually think I have to go home so I can research articles.”

Updates may be to blame for recent crash 

According to Justin Yau, associate director
of the Langara IT department, recent updates to the system may have caused it to crash recently.

But if students have been having problems, they haven’t been bringing them to the department, Yau said.

“Many users do not provide us with enough information when they encounter a problem,” Yau said. “Managing a wireless solution that needs to be up 24/7 and for thousands of users is not a simple task and requires work to maintain.”

Number of students accessing network causes problems 

Another reason students may have trouble with the Wi-Fi on campus is the sheer number of devices accessing the network at one time.

“Consider this: each person coming into the college is carrying two to three wireless devices,” Yau said. “They could potentially have them all connected to the wireless network. We also have to manage over 200 access points all across the campus and we try to provide as much coverage as we can.”

Bower appears to be one of the few students who have brought the issue up with IT and hasn’t had any problems since.

“They had really all the answers and they set me right up so no complaints there,” he said.

Reported by Mike Hodder