Students studying for midterms in Tisch Library yesterday ran into problems when the wireless Internet connection there went down for the third time this week.
The University Information Technology (UIT) department reported an outage at 2:45 p.m. yesterday, saying that it was "actively investigating the situation" in a message on its Web site.
UIT also reported brief wireless Internet outages on Sunday and Tuesday. An Internet outage began at approximately 5:55 p.m. on Sunday and lasted for eight minutes as equipment reloaded itself, according to James Roberts, director of computing for the School of Engineering, the School of Arts and Sciences and UIT.
"We did experience an outage on Sunday of a core piece of our network routing infrastructure that impacted Tisch Library and surrounding buildings," Roberts told the Daily in an e-mail.
But several students complained about wireless issues throughout the day that did not occur during the eight-minute outage reported by UIT. Sophomore Diana Baide was in the library for around four to five hours Sunday, arriving just after 5 p.m.
"Whenever I would try using the Internet, it would just not work. Even when I was connected to Tufts wireless, I really wasn't," Baide said.
Another outage occurred at the library at 8:01 p.m. on Tuesday. UIT initially thought the problems were related to a power supply issue, but Roberts now believes the outage occurred as a result of a defective part within the router.
"We now believe that a component within this router may be the root cause and are actively working with the vendor to find the faulty component in the hardware and have it replaced," Roberts said.
As the most-trafficked wireless location on campus, the library is continuously monitored for Internet disruptions.
Baide, who works at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy's Ginn Library, mentioned similar wireless problems occurring there recently as well.
Due to several complaints from graduate students, the library eventually gave out Ethernet cords.
Freshmen Simone Williams and Kirsten Brown experienced similar problems in Tisch on Sunday.
"[Wireless Internet access] kept fading out. It would go for a while, but it was slow and then it would stop. Sometimes we would get a burst of activity, but it would soon die," Williams said, who was in the library from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Brown arrived at the library around 9:30 p.m. and said that the wireless was working when she got there, but that it stopped after she arrived.
"Ten minutes later, my wireless just stopped. And then I got it sporadically again later on, but not enough to be useful," Brown said.
Tisch Library Director Jo-Ann Michalak said she was unaware there had been any problems with the library's wireless connections over the last few days.
"I checked with library IT services, who advised me that the library's wireless was not down on Sunday," Tisch Library Director Jo-Ann Michalak said in an e-mail.
Michalak did say that she had heard about a significant outage during finals a year ago. She said that problem was fixed quickly.
"We requested that [UIT Manager of Networks and Special Projects] Marj Minnigh and her staff test the wireless [last year] ... They identified some problems, which were addressed promptly, and I have not heard of any more problems since then," Michalak said.
