To quell the complaints of shoddy internet at NKU, the Student Government Association is working with the IT department to improve the wireless internet connections throughout campus.

While the details are still being hammered out, the SGA resolution states that NKU “will have the opportunity to purchase new Wi-Fi technology this fall that will improve the campus bandwidth,” and it also said that the access points, the points of entry devices must connect to to access NKU’s servers, will be upgraded to connect more than the 20 devices they can currently handle.

This Wi-Fi resolution was written by SGA senator and undeclared sophomore Jarrod West and states that many of the complaints received come from the Student Union and the residential halls during their peak hours.

For the Student Union, this time is usually between noon and 2 p.m. The residential halls’ peak hours are around 8 to 10 p.m., according to NKU’s Director of Infrastructure Doug Wells. Wells said that a lot of the traffic at peak times come from sites with mostly video like YouTube and Netflix.

According to Wells, the residential village recently received a upgrade in bandwidth. He said the residential village received the upgrade during the first week of this semester. It increased from being able to process 200 megabytes per second to 300 megabytes per second.

In addition, the resolution says that IT will be “utilizing a form of social media or text messaging services” to receive feedback and “to know where there are issues so they may better resolve them.” Wells said that IT is working on that.

Cincinnati Bell currently provides internet to Callahan Hall, according to West, which is different than the rest of campus. West said there are plans to make Time Warner, which is currently the internet service provider on campus, the universal internet provider for NKU.

“Basically, the point of the resolution was to ask [IT] to improve the Wi-Fi,” West said.

Wells said that IT is trying to locate where the poor access spots are. He said that connecting to spots with poor access is what makes people think that the WI-Fi on campus is bad. Wells suggests checking with the IT department’s webpage to get tips on connecting, report dead spots, submit a service request form for tech support and chat online with 24/7 support.

Students and faculty can also call 859-572-6911 for 24/7 support.

For in-person assistance, students can visit the Norse Tech Bar in UC 252 and staff can visit the IT Help Desk in AC 220 for in-person assistance. The tech bar’s hours are 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Monday thru Thursday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and the help desk’s hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and IT can be emailed at cio@nku.edu for additional assistance.