The University has experienced rapid growth in wireless usage, and University IT continues to work to meet the demand of this transformational shift away from wired connections.  The number of installed wireless internet access points has doubled, devices connected to the wireless network have quadrupled, and there has been a 10-fold increase in internet bandwidth usage within the past four years.  As a result of this growth, University constituents have been experiencing inconsistent/poor Wi-Fi performance since September 2022.

In October 2022, issues such as slow response and dropped connections were reported.  In addition, authentication problems were observed, and access points were losing their radio channel randomization, which is required for accessibility. University engineers responded by load-balancing the authentication service, applying software changes to allow legacy access points to coexist with modern hardware, and escalated the issues to our vendor for additional troubleshooting assistance.  After extensive troubleshooting by our vendor, a configuration change was recommended to the system’s core processing capacity.  This recommendation was in response to an incorrect system-wide configuration that is believed to have been present since its inception in early 2021. This specific change has made a significant positive improvement in the wireless service’s overall health.

There are planned upgrades for the highest Wi-Fi usage buildings and those with the poorest Wi-Fi coverage. Information about these upgrades is available on the tech.rochester.edu website.  And each summer, University IT will complete a system assessment and load test to ensure we are prepared to welcome students back for the start of the school year.

University IT is closely monitoring services and has wireless engineers on campuses daily to assess the performance.  If you experience inconsistent/poor Wi-Fi performance, please notify University IT by phone at (585) 275-2000, email: univithelp@rochester.edu, or use the link to submit a service request found on the tech.rochester.edu homepage.