Wi-Fi comes early to dorms

Although the University’s initiative for comprehensive Wi-Fi in residence halls is nearly a year ahead of schedule, students are not always having the same luck accessing the network.

Jim Gogan, director of networking systems for ITS, said personal routers and hotspots have been posing the main problems for Wi-Fi on campus.

“When you have a personal router, it interferes with the network like if you had FM radio channels operating on the same frequency,” Gogan said.

Chris Williams, the manager of ResNet, said that if a personal router is in a nearby suite or floor, it could interfere with about one-third of the access points a dorm room has.

“Routers are the biggest offenders of these problems, but ‘MyFi’ or personal hotspots on cell phones can actually be a bigger problem for us,” Williams said.

Williams estimated about 150 personal routers remain on campus, but some of those are located in Rams Village 4 and 5 — the only two residence halls on campus that still do not have Wi-Fi in dorm rooms.

Senior Jazmine Baldwin, who lives in Rams Village 1, said wireless routers were installed in her dorm on the last day before winter break.

“The Wi-Fi works fine — no better or worse than anywhere else on campus,” she said. “I just hate that it took so long to get.”

The off-campus student family housing apartment complex, Baity Hill at Mason Farm, also does not have Wi-Fi.

Gogan said this issue is not contained within the residence halls either, and that faculty and staff could be responsible for a portion of the personal routers interfering with the network.

“A lot of (the problem) in the faculty and staff buildings are with things that departments purchase and don’t realize it has Wi-Fi on it,” he said.

“Printers and even projectors can have their own Wi-Fi networks built in.”

Stan Waddell, assistant vice chancellor of ITS Services, said personal routers interfere with and overpower our signal.

“These routers set up the same ID and people sometimes accidentally get onto those when the DHCP server gives out the wrong IP address,” Waddell said.

“In that case, students have trouble regaining access to the UNC network.”

ITS and ResNet officials both said that other personal devices such as wireless printers and game consoles have been affected by personal routers, but if a student tries to connect these devices to UNC-Secure or UNC-PSK after proper setup, the devices should work properly.

Students can receive help from ResNET workers, who live in residence halls, to help with the setup.

“The catch with some wireless printers though, is that some printers look like a router,” Williams said. “That’s the kind of thing that needs to be turned off.”

Williams said the campus Wi-Fi initiative official plan was to be finished next January. As of today, it’s a year ahead of schedule.

“It’s only been a semester, and we’re almost done,” he said.

Gogan said the main thing he hopes students get from the initiative is better connectivity, but not just for education.

“Those affected are not only students, but they call the residence halls their homes,” he said.

“One of the leading traffic sites in the evening is Netflix. Do I have a problem with that? Definitely not.”

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