Sluggish internet connections at the Students’ Union are to be improved by the University – with lasers being used as a last resort.
This semester has seen the Union’s internet become noticeably slow and in October, speeds were reportedly slower than dial up for several computers in the Biko building. One user said that on a particularly bad day, “the union was totally inaccessible from the outside and vice versa.”
The internet connection has been unreliable for over a year and has recently become quite fragile, with student media outlets being the worst affected. Fuse FM depend upon a strong internet connection with which to stream audio as student radio shows are broadcast live online. This means that if the line drops momentarily, then all online listeners during that time will be dropped too.
The University is to conduct approximately £13,000 worth of repairs to worn-out internet feeds, however asbestos within the ducting of the lines has delayed progress.
The Union’s internet connection covers Student Direct, Fuse FM, the computers positioned at the back Biko café and all the computers for Union staff and Executive. Both Student Direct and Fuse FM have been affected by the slow in the internet connections, particularly in terms of uploading articles to an internal server and Fuse’s internet stream.
An email from the Network Manager at University Estates suggests that cashflow was also a problem in terms of ensuring a deadline for completed repair work. Progress with repairing the line as of November 20 is as follows: “We have resolved the payment issues and instruction should be given to Estates early next week to tender for the works. As you probably already know Estates pulled the plug over the original replacement works we had jointly planned over the summer leaving us to go it alone.”
The Union originally had six underground lines feeding into IT services at the University, however four are now worn out or broken, making the repair work necessary.
It is understood that a contingency plan has been put in place should the internet connection go down completely: the University will use laser feeds to ensure there is still sufficient internet connectivity.
November 30th, 2009 at 02:07
for the past academic year and this much of the current one, i’ve not found
any WiFi connection in the Steve Biko building. for the sake of an internet connection,
to check Emails, fetch documents, make references, etc… some societies have had to
move their meetings to the library, or a WiFi bar (yes, they exist!) elsewhere in the
city. only occasionally does the oh-so-very-weak WiFi signal reach the building
from the library. this is quite annoying, especially if societies wish to have richer,
more digitally-interactive events in the building.
many students already use the WiFi services elsewhere on campus, and it has proven to
be useful academically (able to call files from Blackboard anytime),
and socially (students can connect with each other via Facebook anytime).
i had asked about the availability of WiFi since last year, and only got responses
amounting to it being in the pipeline… when will we get it? because, until we do,
societies (and their members) are unable to fully utilize the building as they could be.
December 1st, 2009 at 21:19
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Wifi thing was funding related. It was brought ‘into the pipeline’ again early this academic year, with several people on site looking at locations for university access points, but as yet nothing’s happened. From what I inititally understood it should have happened weeks ago.