In this modern age we all need wifi to do most work or school assignments, so what is up with Winthrop wifi?
As much as I hate sweeping generalizations, we have all been there: you are doing an online assignment or test, or you are shooting the enemy team in multiplayer, or even just trying to watch Netflix, and then it happens. The Wi-Fi drops. Everything freezes and you click click click to see if it’s just the device. But it isn’t.
While Wi-Fi dropping is a big problem, especially for the poor student who is now locked out of their test, it is also a problem that the Wi-Fi just tends to be bad. Unless you are on a school computer, there is no reliability. You could either be lucky and have a fast connection- watch your movie without a single buffer, play your game with no lag, do your research without waiting on a spinning icon- or you could be one of the poor souls who is cursed to never make it through a full episode of Game of Thrones.
From what I recall, during my few weeks having my own router in Thomson a few years ago, I never had a problem. I could watch whatever I wanted without worry. I could play Battlefield without lagging or disconnecting, and I had a smooth experience. Admittedly, I don’t have any advanced knowledge of the invisible internet connection in the air, but I do know that when Winthrop decided to convert to building wide Wi-Fi, my world changed. We had to deal with the spotty WinthropSecure connection, sometimes having to switch to WinthropGuest simply because we couldn’t connect. I had the IT department set up my PS4 for the secret WinthropRegistered connection, but even that lagged far behind what my beloved FeelTheJohnson2018 router was able to provide.
I have always heard of magical college Wi-Fi at other schools. A friend of mine at Georgia Tech was able to download a 10 GB file in around an hour thanks to their internet connection. Yet here, I spend two days downloading a 15GB file to play a video game.
I do not know the exact amount of tuition that goes into our Wi-Fi setup, or how much Winthrop pays annually, but there must be some way to improve. We spend up to four years of our lives on this beautiful campus, and in this digital age, a strong Wi-Fi connection is the greatest convenience, and in some classrooms a necessity, for us to have.
