If this is TigerNet2, what was TigerNet1 like?

CC students, faculty and staff struggled this block to connect to the college’s wireless Internet networks due to several general wireless Internet issues and a software bug. Specifically, the connection would simply drop and then come back over and over again in short intervals, making it difficult for people all over campus to complete their work.

“Tigernet has been more frustrating than usual this block,” sophomore Laura Putnam said. “My internet seemed to be dying on me several times a week.”

The major wireless issues lasted about 10 days. Chad Schonewill, Director of Educational Technology Services, said the Help Desk began receiving complaints during the second week of eighth block.

“Usually when we get two to three complaints, we don’t think it’s a system-wide issue,” Schonewill said. 

However, when the Help Desk began receiving hundreds of reports of problems they began looking more deeply into the issue. Schonewill said that it was difficult to get specific information from students and staff on where they were when the internet stopped working and for how long it was out, which is why it took some time to pinpoint the problem. 

But what even caused the wireless connectivity problems this block?

A bug in the system was largely responsible for the major problems specific to this block. The CC Help Desk pinpointed a bug making the wireless crash after much troubleshooting and speaking with its wireless vendor, Aruba. According to Akse, the college pays Aruba roughly $17,000 a year so they are available to consult with the Help Desk and replace equipment if necessary. 

“There was no additional cost for their help in diagnosing the problem,” said Akse. “Paying the $17,000 is like a warranty.”

Aruba was able to help diagnose the problem on April 27 and the Help Desk sent an e-mail to the campus community saying that it would be “taking the wireless networks (tigernet2 and ccguest) down…to apply a patch that should fix the problem people have been having over the past week with frequently getting disconnected from wireless.”

The e-mail further stated that the signal strength issues would likely still occur due to the aforementioned general issues (interference and unplugged access points), but that the fix in the bug would help considerably.

Despite the e-mail, CC junior Ellie Smith said that she didn’t know why the Internet was performing so badly.

“It’s frustrating because [the Internet] is so unreliable,” said Smith. “Beyond that, there is no communication as to what is going on. When we do get e-mails about it after the fact, it’s completely unclear and unhelpful.”

However, CC junior Eleanor Mulshine stated that her wireless connection has been running much more smoothly over the past week since the bug was fixed.

“I was glad that the Help Desk addressed the Internet issues,” said Mulshine. “And after their e-mail, it’s been much faster.”

Both Schonewill and Akse said that having specific information about the nature of the wireless failures from complainers would have greatly reduced the time it took to fix the problem. They both encourage students and staff to be very specific in their complaints in the future so the Help Desk can pinpoint the problem in a quicker and more efficient way.

“The quicker we have the information the quicker we can fix the problem,” said Schonewill.

Once they had actually found the problem, it was fixed in half a day.

“We started fixing the problem at 5 p.m. and were done by the next day,” said Akse. 

Schonewill said that this was the first time a problem like this has occurred since the college got its new system in July 2007. Since then, there have been two wireless Internet issues, but they mainly dealt with the registration system that authenticates internet usage and lasted for roughly one day. 

In addition to the bug, the school struggles with connection disruption due to interference—both internal and external.

“Wireless networks by nature are vulnerable to interference,” said Schonewill.

Internal interference was coming from “rogue” access points on campus. According to Schonewill, when people try to create their own wireless networks by plugging a wireless router into the CC Ethernet or other similar methods, that network causes massive radio interference in the area. Such interference causes signal quality to degrade so much that computers cannot stay connected. Schonewill stated that CC has 50 to 70 of these networks, which caused many connectivity woes.

A smaller cause of the problem was external interference, or interference from nearby off-campus networks, such as home or business Wi-Fi in the vicinity. There are currently over 100 external interferences on the fringes of the CC campus, all of which slightly degrade the Tigernet signal. This causes more of an issue for the edges of campus, like the CC Inn and Mathias. 

“These issues are not easy to solve,” said Schonewill. “We can’t control the types of things people to try to set up in their rooms and homes.”

In addition, the number of unplugged wireless access points (APs) on campus was a problem that contributed to the wireless issues on campus. According to Schonewill, the CC wireless network consists of more than 500 access points across campus. At any given time, roughly 80 of these are not functioning, almost always because they have been unplugged. When several APs are unplugged in a certain area, this causes severe connectivity issues.

This is mainly a problem in the Western Ridge Apartments, where the APs are plugged in people’s rooms. These APs are small gray boxes with what look like bunny ears, and they are usually mounted on the ceiling or high up on a wall. Schonewill said that if there are no blinking green lights, something is wrong and the AP is probably unplugged.

There were also several general issues that contributed to the Tigernet problems, one of which was related to bandwidth. Schonewill said that most Internet performance issues on campus don’t involve a problem with Wi-Fi but with Internet bandwidth.

“Our actual internet bandwidth is generally always maxed out,” said Schonewill.

Terri Akse, Director of Network and Systems, said that Netflix streaming takes up 20% of the college’s Internet bandwidth. 

Another general issue Schonewill stated was the fact that the wireless signal just has trouble passing through things, like water and microwave signals.

“Human beings are mostly water, so there’s nothing we can really do about that,” said Schonewill.

When asked what advice they had for students who encounter wireless problems in the future, both Schonewill and Akse said that the best thing to do is to plug into an Ethernet. This is a faster, more stable connection, and cables cost less than $10. If students plugged into an Ethernet connection in their rooms, then they would never have to depend on wireless as their primary Internet source. 

Akse also said that the Help Desk discourages students from setting up their own wireless connection in their rooms, as this creates internal interference.

“It’s not something we can forbid them from doing,” said Schonewill. “But it certainly will cause problems.”

The Help Desk expressed hope that the wireless connection would remain stable for the rest of the year.

“No issue like this is ever predicted,” said Schonewill. “It just happens.