In today’s age, the Internet is crucial in the lives of college students. We depend on it for anything from research to homework, projects, email and of course, social networking. But the Internet connection on our very own campus is lacking. Many students, myself included, find themselves extremely frustrated when sitting in the middle of campus and struggling to find a decent Wi-Fi signal.

It appears as though the administration is aware of the issue, seeing as how there are four or five different connections with “UA” attached to them. However, the two designated for student use, UA-WPA2 and UA-WPA-PSK, cannot be accessed in various areas of campus. Locations such as Farrah Hall, Shelby Hall, Reese Phifer Hall and Alston Hall are just some buildings on our campus filled with areas having either spotty or no connection. There is a similar situation at my apartment, where one common Wi-Fi network is present for our entire complex. It would always be congested around certain hours and I could never get work done. In response, I invested in a router much like many other residents, and the result was improved connection and better performance. My suggestion to the University is to get more routers with better organization.

By including more routers, more opportunities for a decent Internet connection become available. So for example, if there are 5,000 students in a given area on campus and a router that can provide a decent connection for 1,000 people, why not have five routers that are able to fairly give all 5,000 students a decent connection instead of all those students being bottlenecked on one router? Also, over time, technology will improve to allow for better routers to handle more people connected to those routers, so the University should also invest in upgrading the routers we have now that may already be obsolete.

While I could go on about how the increasing growth of the University is also a major factor in this issue, I think that is already clear. I also believe the University will do what is necessary to improve the experience of the students on campus. I just hope that this improvement will happen sooner rather than later.

Erynn Williams is a sophomore majoring in dance and international studies. Her column runs biweekly on Wednesdays.