At the beginning of the fall 2023 semester, Weber State University students were frustrated with ongoing Wi-Fi problems.

According to Jonathan Karras, networking and communications manager at WSU, the network was overwhelmed with the amount of new users, most of which were attempting to use the guest network as opposed to the student one.

“What happens is a lot of phones are behind the scenes trying to get places and they’re kind of overloading that captive portal,” Karras said. “Due to the load on the system, that captive portal was struggling to allow people through.”

Karras also said devices are constantly updated and doing more that users aren’t even aware of. Due to this, even if there isn’t some sort of spike in students at Weber, the network still has work to do.

“That was purely a high load issue,” Karras said. “We’ve made some tweaks to the system so that it shouldn’t be as overloaded again if we see that same sort of thing.”

During this initial Wi-Fi crisis, Karras’ team was forced to shut down the network for two days to make the necessary adjustments. The network help desk stayed open during the closure and informed students about the student network, which will work more efficiently going forward.

Karras said the eduroam network at WSU can also connect students to Wi-Fi when they’re at public libraries, public schools and at other Utah colleges.

“Maybe you’re in sports, and you end up at SUU or something, you can get on their network … you’ll just connect,” Karras said.

Overall, both Karras and the network help desk urge students to connect to eduroam going forward; it should work better, connect automatically after you log in and keep the system running smoothly for everyone.