OWU’s Wifi: Progress Already Made and What the Future Holds

Ohio Wesleyan’s wifi network, once notorious for its unreliability and outages, has received a total overhaul within the past year. Information services staff still have plans to improve the infrastructure further, but many students remain unaware of these changes.

Brian Rellinger, associate provost for Academic Support at OWU and its chief information officer, announced the last step in this process is installing 250 new wireless access points in the residence halls over the Thanksgiving break.

Despite supply chain issues causing massive delays in shipment, Rellinger and the Information Services staff are going to be able to implement these access points while most students are off campus.

Although Ohio Wesleyan’s wifi has struggled significantly in the past, Rellinger is confident in the recent changes that have been made recently.

“The wifi uptime at OWU is very high, and rarely is completely down. We did have two extended outages this calendar year which has certainly resulted in frustration for our user community. Aside from those types of outages, we typically find that we are able to fix any connection or slowness issues for students if they create a Help Desk ticket,” Rellinger said.

This new stability is thanks to an initiative that has almost completely replaced Ohio Wesleyan’s wifi network over the past 12 months.

Drake Ogden, a senior Medieval Studies and History Education major, has experienced the ups and downs of OWU’s wifi since his freshman year.

“My concerns were that the wifi would be slow, and that there would be issues with connectivity, especially in areas far from the center of campus,” Ogden said. “These issues have improved somewhat, but still remain a problem”.

When asked if he was aware of the wifi infrastructure upgrades, Ogden said he had heard about it and noticed some improvements, but was still unsatisfied by the wifi’s performance.

“I do not think they have been communicated well, since I know nothing about the changes other than that they occurred,” said Ogden.

Information Services works hard to provide a positive experience with technology at OWU during a time of rapid growth in terms of video conferencing and number of devices students bring to campus, according to Rellinger.

With the final steps of the wifi overhaul being put in place, students, staff, and faculty will soon get to make their own judgments on the new and improved system they have been promised.