The Student Government Association’s Academic Affairs committee, organized a study into Wi-Fi problems at Seton Hall University.
The study helped show where the worst Wi-Fi on campus is located. Along with these findings, the IT department, students, and administration are trying to find the best ways to solve these issues.
Justin Avendaño and Raven Campbell, freshman ad-hoc senators of the academic affairs committee, undertook this project.
“It didn’t feel that big, it just felt like something that needed to be done,” Campbell said. “I know Justin and I are both busy students trying to start our freshman year but we really wanted to take on this initiative and make a change when we knew other people were extremely busy as well. We wanted to help with whatever we could.”
This Wi-Fi project started with the finance committee wanting to replace the rotors for Boland.
However, due to the high costs of replacing the rotors, the idea fell through. The Wi-Fi dead spots were still an issue, so the project went to the academic affairs committee. Senator Nicholas Alfano asked Avendaño, who is also a member of academic affairs, to undertake this project.
“I was like okay sure this sounds fun,” Avendaño said. “I love research and Wi-Fi. I dragged Raven along because I knew she’s up to the task and I can always depend on her when it comes to stuff like this.”
Campbell and Avendaño’s process for finding the Wi-Fi dead spots was thorough and took a lot of hard work in order to get the most accurate data. They did receive help from Senator Anna Plank, who created a survey sent out to Seton Hall students. This survey helped give them general student feedback about the Wi-Fi quality.
For the next part of the process, Campbell and Avendaño went to every building and every floor on those buildings to test for the latency-which measures how fast or slow the Wi-Fi is. They used an app called speed test by the company Ookla. They tested most of the buildings on the weekend, so the information would be more accurate.
“We went to those buildings when there were not a lot of people because we wanted to make sure that the strength of the Wi-Fi is as unbiased as possible,” Avendaño said. “If we go during peak hours there would be other variables.”
Through testing the latency of each area of each building on campus they were able to find where the most Wi-Fi dead spots were. Some areas on campus that had the most Wi-Fi problems were Boland South, the 4th floor of Aquinas and parts of Corrigan Hall.
Many Boland South residents were not surprised by these findings. Melanie Liriano, a freshman speech pathology major, lives in Boland South.
“I am really glad they’re trying to fix this problem,” Liriano said.“I find often that I do not have wifi and that it goes out and is very slow."
This study is not where Campbell and Avendaño’s work ends. Next, they have to find solutions to these Wi-Fi issues. Actions such as moving the rotors or adding more in certain areas, can help to fix these issues.
“[Finding the Wi-Fi dead spots] is only part of our initiative the other part is actually addressing and bringing it to the IT department so that they can actually fix it,” Avendaño said. “Besides that, we plan to help them out because you know fixing the whole campus Wi-Fi is not easy even for a department.”
Campbell and Avendaño mentioned how help from many Seton Hall community members made it possible for them to be successful in their research. They said they were especially thankful for Senators Alfano and Plank who helped and guided them through this process.
Genevieve Krupcheck can be reached at genevieve.krupcheck@student.shu.edu.
