Information Resources and Technologies upgraded the network switches in St. Thomas campus dorms over January Term to enhance the signal and strength of the Wi-Fi.

The network infrastructure was upgraded Jan. 11, and network upgrades to the residence halls were put in place in late January. A brief, scheduled outage occurred on Jan. 25 during the upgrades, but Wi-Fi was restored shortly thereafter. Chris Gregg, director of information technologies and interim vice president of IRT, said 64 network switches, which handle all traffic coming from the wireless access points in the residence halls, were replaced; they represent around one-third of the switches placed around campus, according to Gregg.

“These new switches will improve … the speed and reliability of both the wired and wireless networks in the residence halls,” Gregg said.

IRT upgraded the switches because of a planned replacement of the Cisco Clean Access network authentication system this summer. The new program will allow students to register their mobile devices with greater ease.

Freshman Jordan O’Malley lives in Grace Hall and said the internet has been significantly better so far.

“I’m pretty satisfied with the quality. It could be better, but it works for me,” O’Malley said.

Junior Peter Moe lives in Flynn Hall and agreed that the Wi-Fi is better now, although he said improvements could have been more noticeable.

“It’s hard to tell,” Moe said. “I thought that it could have been faster, but it could have also been a lot slower.”

Since much of class material is found online, connectivity issues can still prove to be frustrating for some students. Freshman Marisol Moreno still experiences connection errors, but she said the new Wi-Fi is an improvement.

“I don’t get disconnected as often now,” Moreno said.

While the data from the network switches hasn’t been collected yet, Gregg said it will shed light on the differences to be made. The switches elsewhere on campus have already been upgraded, which should create a sturdy network for the next few years, according to Gregg.

“With technology, it’s hard to call anything permanent,” Gregg said.

Jeffrey Langan can be reached at lang5466@stthomas.edu.