(Mar 12/09) I would like to voice my concern over the speed of wireless internet at the Health Sciences Library. While other libraries on campus do not have this problem, the internet connection here seems to be extremely slow on a daily basis. At times webpages can take over a minute to load, which makes it impossible to conduct any meaningful work online. I am sure many students have experienced similar difficulty with this. It would be great if the bandwidth can be increased to cope with the high volume of library users in this beautiful facility.
Library response: I wanted to make sure I got my facts straight before answering your concern. The Health Sciences Library has nine wireless access points, with a speed of 54 mbps. That is lots of capacity, but because of the open nature of the library space, unlike the other libraries the points here have overlapping signals. The response speed is a result of the number of concurrent users accessing the point. Unfortunately there is no automatic switching between the points; we are investigating this, but it is a cost issue. In the meantime, you need to go into the wireless software on your laptop, view all of the available access points and go with the one with the strongest signal. The good news is that the Computer Services Unit has just ordered a new wireless server to monitor access points for traffic and adjust the signal as needed; testing will occur over the summer, with implementation planned for the fall semester. (Mar 16/09)
Answered by: Liz Bayley (Director, Health Sciences Library)
Answered by: Liz Bayley (Director, Health Sciences Library)