Around 4 a.m. on Dec. 2, there was a Wi-Fi outage on campus.
Students received an email at 7:58 a.m. to alert them of this outage.
“We have a team of technicians currently working on the issue and hope to have everything back up and running shortly,” read the email.
Throughout the day, certain areas of campus came back online.
Around 1:30 p.m., students who had internet access instantly lost connection.
Emma McCrady, sophomore nursing student, said her day was severely affected by the Wi-Fi outage.
“I couldn’t do any of my assignments, write my papers or study for my test,” said McCrady.
Though the class McCrady was in when the Wi-Fi went down was not affected, her roommate’s class got cancelled.
At 3:23 p.m., students, staff and faculty received an email from the university’s Department of Information Technology (IT) to update them on the status of the outage.
The email, in part, read, “We have made significant progress with restoring network service to [the] majority of the buildings on campus, however, we continue to experience sporadic outages in some buildings.”
The university heavily relies on technology, and without it, many functions were rendered ineffective.
For example, all the printers on campus are connected to the Wi-Fi system.
Canvas is the learning management system professors use to post assignments and other class materials. Students use Canvas to submit assignments; therefore, without Canvas, basic school functions could not be completed until the Wi-Fi was restored.
This outage comes after the university began its project to upgrade its Wi-Fi network.
Over Thanksgiving break, IT began working on the campus network and telecommunication infrastructure, including configuring and replacing switches in the campus data center.
The goal of the upgrade is to improve “the reliability and functioning of the network and Wi-Fi systems.”
IT aims to complete the entire project before the spring 2025 semester.
The work being conducted over break was scheduled to end at 11 a.m. on Dec. 1.
As of 1:21 p.m. on Nov. 27, phase one of the university network project was complete.
Donald Walls Jr., manager of User Services, said in an email, “We have completed our network core and firewall infrastructure work today and it was a success. We have tested and confirmed that University systems and services are online and working properly.”
A spokesperson for the university has not confirmed or denied if the problems experienced on Dec. 2 are connected to the recent updating project.
Walls sent a follow-up email at 5:29 p.m. on Dec. 2, saying that the university’s Wi-Fi connection was restored.
Walls wrote, “Office phones, network services, and wireless network connectivity is back online. There are a few smaller glitches that need to be addressed… We are continuing to monitor the network to ensure it is running efficiently and will keep you posted as we monitor everything.”
