Information Technology Services to install new wifi system over winter break

By: Antho­ny Zepperi
Octo­ber 10, 2019
The Dai­ly Campus

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Connecticut’s Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Ser­vices (UITS) has cre­at­ed a new design for cam­pus res­i­dence halls in response to the cur­rent spot­ty wifi on the Storrs campus. 

The new wifi sys­tem involves putting a small cur­rent gen­er­a­tion access point in every dorm room, Michael Mundrane, vice pres­i­dent for infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, said. 

“The new equip­ment, which pro­vides both wired and wire­less con­nec­tion options, will be installed over the cur­rent jack in the room,” Mundrane said. “These devices are indi­vid­u­al­ly less pow­er­ful, but every stu­dent will be quite near one and will expe­ri­ence a high-qual­i­ty signal.” 

The design is cur­rent­ly used in some hos­pi­tal­i­ty envi­ron­ments and is a very good choice for res­i­dence halls, Mundrane said. 

“Our pri­ma­ry goal was to pro­vide the high­est qual­i­ty expe­ri­ence to each and every room,” Mundrane said. 

UITS chose to first imple­ment the new sys­tem in Gar­ri­gus Suites, as Gar­ri­gus’ cur­rent wfi sys­tem is one of the old­est deploy­ments on cam­pus, Mundrane said. The new equip­ment will be installed over win­ter break. 

Mundrane promised stu­dents on cam­pus will enjoy this new effi­cient wire­less system. 

“I expect that stu­dents will enjoy a sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved wifi expe­ri­ence upon return from win­ter break,” Mundrane said. 

Cur­rent­ly, UConn’s wifi sys­tem has been incon­sis­tent and won’t be run­ning smooth­ly again until this win­ter, UConn spokesper­son Stephanie Reitz said. 

Mundrane said aging has been a major fac­tor in the spot­ty wifi on campus. 

“Stu­dent usage of wifi has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the years, as they are con­nect­ing more devices per stu­dent and using more band­width per device,” Mundrane said. “All tech­nol­o­gy has a usable life, and the infra­struc­ture at this loca­tion was deployed quite some time ago with the com­bi­na­tion of aging infra­struc­ture and con­tem­po­rary stu­dent usage pat­terns result­ing in an inad­e­quate experience.” 

Mundrane said that cur­rent­ly, UConn pro­vides wifi through wifi sig­nals locat­ed in var­i­ous points across campus. 

Mundrane said the sig­nals will improve with new updates done frequently. 

“Access points improve with each new mod­el and archi­tec­ture evolves over time,” Mundrane said. “Old equip­ment and old designs do not per­sist forever.”