Wi-Fi outages in residence halls temporarily resolved, firmware upgrade to be implemented Saturday

After five days of connectivity issues for residents, Wi-Fi outages in residence halls across campus were temporarily resolved on Tuesday.

Information Technology Services found a code defect believed to be causing these problems. The network requires a firmware update, which aims to fix performance issues. This update will cause a brief service outage for residents in the affected areas, according to a statement from UNC Media Relations.

Carolina Housing notified residents on Thursday via email that the update will take place this Saturday from 5-7 a.m. in batches to upgrade each access point. Media Relations said ITS initially planned to complete this upgrade over an upcoming break.

ResNET, the ITS support organization for Carolina Housing residents, received reports of connectivity issues starting last Friday.

Geensia Xiong, a sophomore living in Morrison Residence Hall, is one of about 40 student employees called Residential Computing Consultants. These students live on campus and help resolve IT issues.

“I think of it as a technology version of an RA,” she said.

After she clocked in remotely on Sunday, Xiong said she noticed that the help ticket count where students submit requests for technology assistance was “super high.”

She worked with her team of RCCs to understand the specific locations and devices that students were struggling with Wi-Fi connections. Xiong said she and other RCCs tried to "pinpoint" where the issues were occurring and reported these locations to ResNET. 

Media Relations said that after the problem escalated on Monday, ResNET started working with "on-site staff" to identify the root cause. 

“Our investigation revealed that approximately 10% of our access points had disabled their radio signals,” Media Relations said. 

The issues appeared to be caused by a bug in the software managing these access points and Media Relations added that as the specific code defect is not yet identified, a complete resolution is not guaranteed.

ITS initially suspected the Wi-Fi issues were connected to the recent MacOS update known as Sonoma because other higher education institutions reported similar issues on Friday, but discovered that the issue was not limited to MacOS devices.

Though some students who had reported problems on Friday told ResNET that their connectivity issues were resolved over the weekend, there was an influx of reports on Monday.

Hailey Clayton, a first-year living in Ehringhaus Residence Hall, said she was unable to study for her three upcoming exams in her dorm on Monday evening. 

“I couldn’t access Canvas, so that caused a lot of issues,” she said. 

Clayton said she and her roommate both had to go from South Campus to Davis Library in order to access Wi-Fi services for their devices. 

Junior Srinithi Srinivas, a resident of Ram Village Apartments, said she immediately noticed a Wi-Fi issue after returning to campus Sunday night. 

“I was super confused. I was able to use a hotspot to kind of get my work done, but some of my roommates had even more issues — like their phones weren’t working,” Srinivas said. 

She figured out the Wi-Fi was working sporadically throughout the apartments and said she was able to work in the lounge in her building.

“I think that it’s pretty much back to normal now, but on Monday and Tuesday, at least, the speed was very slow,” she said. 

She also said that this kind of widespread outage was a new experience for her.

“[I] definitely have had some times where there’s been spotty, slow Wi-Fi around campus, but I can’t recall another time where it was just not working at all,” she said.

Carolina Housing sent emails to many students in the affected residence halls over the course of Monday and Tuesday, providing updates about the attempts to resolve the connectivity issues.

“We appreciate the patience and cooperation of our users during this time and will continue to provide updates as we work to address and rectify this issue,” Media Relations said.

@dailytarheel | university@dailytarheel.com