Do you hate getting those “You are not connected to the Internet” messages?

The general consensus among students and faculty has been, and continues to be “yes,” so during the past year and a half the university has been working on an estimated $8 million project to improve wireless Internet accessibility in every building on campus.

By July, that project will be approximately halfway completed.

About $4 million has already been raised for the project. Jennifer Lohrbach, director of networking with Information Technology, said the vast majority of those funds have gone toward buying the physical wiring itself and the underlying infrastructure materials that support it.

She said the coverage is projected to cover three devices per person, depending on the varying capacities of each room and building.

The project isn’t slated to be finished until summer 2016. 

“With Internet connectivity itself, we’ve got 100-gig Internet,” Lohrbach said. “We’re always trying to stay ahead with the latest and greatest as far as speeds go.”

That speed is a rating of how quickly information is delivered to each computer connected to that Internet source. But that doesn’t automatically mean that speed is available to everyone all the time.

Lohrbach said most people think about the Internet as a singular entity, but that the two distinct components of speed and accessibility both contribute to the user’s experience.

So what about that 100-gig speed she mentioned?

“That’s our interstate to everywhere in the world — we don’t want it to be an interstate with speed limits,” she said. “We want it to be the Audubon.” 

The university is trying to make the interstate more available across campus by installing more wireless access points.

“Those are the devices that you see hanging up everywhere, or that we see contractors pulling cables to get to and that’s really our access, or our ‘on-ramps’ to the Internet,” Lohrbach said. 

Because installing the hardware takes time and resources, IT decided the buildings with the most traffic and the most severe need would be rewired first. This included buildings like Parks Library, the Memorial Union, Curtiss Hall, Kildee Hall and Gilman Hall.

“Gilman was one of the first ones because that was really a horrible building to do from a wireless perspective,” Lohrbach said. “It’s built as a fortress — not ideal for wireless signals.”

She pointed out this project has also been particularly time-consuming because of how thoroughly the university is trying to improve accessibility.

“Before this project started, we just tried to hit the classrooms or the places that we had funding for,” Lohrbach said. “This has a bit of a different approach in that we’re trying to blanket the buildings.” 

The project has already covered most of the oldest and busiest buildings on campus, and is now trickling down to hit buildings like Forker and the Mechanics Lab with smaller Internet demands.

“It’s expensive to pull cable in all these buildings,” Lohrbach said.

With that, IT is pulling two cables to each access point for future proofing, she said.

“In the next round of wireless technology we’re anticipating more throughout and more power, so we’re doing this ahead of time and preparing for the next generation of equipment,” Lohrbach said.

The university also decided to put off rewiring certain buildings with impending remodels because of the potential cost of rewiring them again when construction is finished.

“We really want to make sure that no matter where you are in a building, you have access,” Lohrbach said. “But any time there’s a remodel in a building, we’ll have to readdress the coverage and maybe do new wiring.”

At the moment, students are having variable experiences with ISU Internet.

“It’s not unusual to be disconnected several times from the network in a single hour,” said Catherine Krahling, junior in genetics.

Others have had a more positive experience.

“I barely have issues with the Internet, but sometimes it’s completely down,” said Breanna Meier, senior in kinesiology and health.

Matt Sierra also said he hasn’t had too much trouble with the Internet.

“I’ve never really had any problems except when I was on campus during the day,” he said. “Then it could be pretty slow.”

And yet some are still experiencing even more significant problems.

“The campus Internet is very unreliable,” said Sydney Houde, junior in biology. “You can’t take online quizzes on your laptop because you’re too scared the Internet will stop working.”

And some people are unimpressed with the campus Internet in general.

“Internet connectivity is awful on campus,” said Adam Vieau, junior in biochemistry.

Some said the Internet availability affected their ability to reach course materials.

“For a university that delivers classes and schoolwork primarily online, the Wi-Fi is terrible,” said Abigail Hamilton, sophomore in biology. “I’ve even had professors dismiss class due to their inability to connect to reliable Internet.”

These comments are why improvements are continually needed for the university Internet infrastructure.

“The Internet is mediocre but not horrible,” said Pierre Guzman, sophomore in biology. “It can certainly be better.”

A few people have noticed the effects of this project in their recent Internet use.

“This semester hasn’t been too bad. Things have improved a little bit,” said William Dyke, junior in political science.