Wireless network performance will be improving in the CSE Student Resource Center later this month, thanks to a report submitted anonymously from a student.
An unknown student sent a message through the department's online contact form, alerting Department Chair Matt Dwyer and others that it was inconvenient to work in the Student Resource Center (SRC) because of poor performance of the UNL-AIR and UNL-AIR-E wireless networks in that room. Dwyer forwarded the report to CSE's Systems Administration staff for further investigation. After surveying several of the students who work in the SRC, it became clear that this wasn't an isolated issue affecting just a single student, but instead was an ongoing issue that seemed to intermittently impact several students.
The UNL network, including wireless networking in nearly every building on campus, is managed centrally by UNL's Office of Information Technology Services (ITS). Shea Svoboda, an Instructional Technology Specialist for the Computer Science and Engineering Department, opened a support ticket for the Networking team at ITS, and they quickly identified that the wireless access point closest to the SRC was oversubscribed. In other words, there were too many people connected to that specific access point. As a result, ITS will be installing another wireless access point to accommodate the increased demand from more students using the SRC. It will take about two weeks to get the cabling pulled to that location in order to install the new equipment, but that should address the problems that students have been encountering during periods of peak usage.
Thank you to the student who brought this issue to light! If you have an issue that needs to be addressed by the Computer Science and Engineering Department (CSE), you can report it online at http://cse.unl.edu/contact-form -- please include your name and email address if you'd like someone to follow up with you, or leave those fields empty if you want to remain anonymous. For routine technical issues related to a service managed by CSE, please send a detailed description of your problem to support@cse.unl.edu via email. For technical issues related to non-CSE services at UNL (e.g. Blackboard, networking, etc.), you can contact the ITS Help Desk at MySupport@unl.edu via email or by phone at 402-472-3970. To report non-technical incidents anonymously to UNL, use the TIPS system by clicking on the "TIPS Report Incident" link in the footer at the very bottom of any UNL webpage or go directly to http://go.unl.edu/86bw