Despite the fact that Ashland University is four weeks into the school year, students and faculty are still having problems with their internet.

“After three years of being at Ashland, I’ve always disliked the people skills of the help desk workers, but the one thing I could rely on was the speedy internet,” senior Katie Mock said. “Now entering my fourth year, the internet is completely and utterly terrible.”

Curtis White, vice president of Information Technology, said the problem is that the wireless network is too old to meet the university’s current needs.

“We don’t have all the bandwidth in place that we want to,” said Curtis White, vice president of Information Technology. “The wireless network is old and not what it should be. It’s five years old and was originally designed with only the academic departments in mind, not residences.”

Bandwidth is essentially the speed at which students can use the internet, be it for downloading, uploading, or browsing. Unfortunately, for most students that means that the bandwidth is unreliable and slow.

White also cited the increased campus population and more internet compatible devices as causes of the poor service.

“More people came to campus this year with laptops, iPads, Xboxes, and other devices that we weren’t expecting,” White explained. “It’s hard to keep the bandwidth high with this many people on campus with so many devices.”

IT does plan to boost the campus bandwidth this fall, an increase that could nearly double the wired capacity on campus. Internet capacity on campus was 70 megabytes per second during the 2009-2010 school year. In anticipation for the upcoming year, IT has ordered a 180 MB connection that is currently under construction.

IT moved the Amstutz internet and the campus wireless-only capabilities from the current network to the old network Sept. 8 in hopes that the speed on the current network will increase. Ethernet cable internet access and all other buildings use the new network.

The network that covers most of campus is a 60 MB network and the old network that now houses Amstutz and the wireless-only is a 45 MB connection.

In the meantime, several students said they feel the unreliable internet is disappointing compared to what they pay.

“It’s definitely lacking,” sophomore Matt McMullen said. “The wireless is shoddy at best and plugging in directly through an ethernet cable isn’t much better. For as much as we pay to go to AU, you’d think we could get more reliable internet access.”

Sophomore Brian Young agreed.

“I hate that I pay so much for such bad internet,” he said. “It definitely disrupts the amount of porn I can watch.”

Students across campus have been dissatisfied with the wireless access as well as the wired access.

“I have a pathetically weak signal in my room that kicks us off about every five minutes, which leads to my roommate having to restart her computer frequently to try to do her homework online,” Mock said. “So unless professors want to stop using ANGEL or will no longer assign research assignments, IT needs to do their job.”

“Completely replacing the wireless network would be a high dollar operation,” White said. “It would cost a couple hundred thousand dollars. It’s not only a matter of funding, but also practicality. We would have to get into spaces to remove and replace access points across campus.”

“Help is coming. The bandwidth increase should come in October and will be eliminating wired internet issues,” White said. “We want students to feel at home here on campus, and great internet service is part of feeling at home.”