By Christian Berry
CCC Journalism Program
BLACKWOOD – Many students have been complaining about considerable hit-or-miss, lagging connectivity of the free Wi-Fi provided at Camden County College.
Student Jeremy Schuck expresses frustration because of poor Wi-Fi connectivity at CCC. By Christian Berry, CCC Journalism Program
In this day and age, many students choose to purchase their textbooks in electronic format since the average physical textbook tends to cost 40 percent to 50 percent more than its electronic counterpart. With a growing number of students purchasing online electronic textbooks comes a growing number of students unable to access their textbooks in class because of a deficiency or even absence of free Wi-Fi. This tends to be more of a problem for students taking classes that require in-class use of the assigned textbook.
“I was excited to see I had saved over $200 by purchasing electronic books, come to find out I can only access about half of them,” says Nick Hutchinson, a student at CCC. Hutchinson claims he had no other option but to print out each page of his e-textbook to be prepared for class.
Other students claim the free Wi-Fi at CCC is very accessible; however, staying connected to the network is a different story.
“I enjoy coming to the CCC library when I need to get work done,” states Jeremy Schuck, a student at CCC. “What I don’t enjoy is spending half of my time waiting for a single Web page to load.” After saying that, Schuck decided to pull up a Web page that took approximately eight minutes to load.
Individuals experiencing poor Wi-Fi connectivity may be too far away from any of the network access points located throughout each building, says an Office of Information Technology employee at CCC. Higher amounts of IP addresses connected to an access point can also drastically slow down the CCC wireless network. In other words, the more individuals connected to the wireless network at the same time, the slower the network becomes.
“Certain periods of the day usually display different connectivity results, with 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. showing the highest rates of Internet congestion,” the employee states.