Wi-Fi is awesome, but….

Let’s talk about Mt. Hood’s Wi-Fi. It’s something that a lot of us use, and it’s time both to recognize how awesome it is to have a service like this, and how we can fix a few nagging issues.

First, let’s be thankful we even have Wi-Fi. The fact that we have Internet that can be magically accessed by our mobile devices at our school is amazing. That there is enough bandwidth to let everyone be able to get moderate speeds is equally awesome. At The Advocate, we hear a lot of complaining about the Wi-Fi around here – even a few of us do, too – but complaining about free Wi-Fi is the definition of a First World problem.

Sure, it’s not the fastest, but it gets the job done. You are not going to be running any videos at 1080p or downloading a movie within minutes, and pages with a lot of Flash content may take a while to load. But, you should be able to Google the answers to your research paper 15 minutes before class, no problem.

As for that speed, we have been told 30 access points should be added to the campus Wi-Fi infrastructure year, by Don Adams, manager of IT systems and programming. More access points on campus means others won’t be as crowded, meaning the speed will go up during busy days. Adams said the dream is to have 100 percent coverage in every building at Mt. Hood, a rather lofty dream because the overall cost to fully cover the school would reach $1 million, he said.

However, since we are Americans and we complain about amazing things, anyways, let’s talk about one chronic gripe we at The Advocate have with the Wi-Fi.

The one thing I think we can all agree on is, the constant need to verify our username and password gets very annoying. Mt. Hood’s Wi-Fi is incredibly needy: You ignore it for five minutes and it throws a tantrum, kicking you off so you can politely sign in again.

It seems trivial to complain about the 10 seconds it takes re-entering a username and password, but those are 10 seconds that could have been spent on YouTube or staring at the page because it’s taking forever to load on a weekday when everyone is online.

We’re not saying it should be removed; we understand it’s for security purposes. But maybe extend the length by a few hours so we don’t attempt to reload pages in vain, not knowing we’re disconnected and then having to wait for the prompt to reconnect.

Anyway, aside from some minor complaints, Wi-Fi here looks awesome to us. But, what do you think is great or needs to be looked at regarding Wi-Fi at Mt. Hood? Let us know!