VUW’s Wi-Fi system is struggling with an increase in the number and frequency of users, according to ITS Director Stuart Haselden.
Following widespread reports of slow Wi-Fi, and even outages in some parts of the campuses, Salient approached ITS about the issue. According to Haselden, the average number of Wi-Fi users has jumped by almost 5000, from 16,500 to over 21,000.
“No other changes have been made [to the system] apart from increase in use.”
In order to rectify this issue, ITS is “looking to increase our bandwidth with our vendor — i.e. to purchase more capacity.”
Various posts on unofficial VUW Facebook pages have identified an issue with accessing the Facebook Messenger application on campus Wi-Fi. Comments range from those who claim “this is an absolute stitch up” to others who have labelled the Wi-Fi access as “a joke.”
When asked about the issues specifically with Messenger, Haselden said “from a Service Desk perspective, we’ve had no more than two or three calls regarding an issue with Facebook Messenger. We are not getting flooded with calls about this.”