In Trinity, our hierarchy of needs is built on crumbling foundations. WiFi, the basic necessity of all our lives, is of such an appalling standard that students of the College have actually been seen taking notes and paying attention in lectures.
In an age where our lives are spent in the digital world, without an appreciable standard of WiFi, the struggle can become unbearable. The reasons for such brutal standard of internet connection could possibly be explained by the fact that that we are situated in the direct centre of the country’s capital, where the most advanced web infrastructure is based and that we are the most prominent and reputable university of the land, and the year is 2015. Except that it can’t. There is never an acceptable reason as to why WiFi is not top-notch, especially with the availability of products to improve it, such as wifi extenders at gear surfer.
In scenes that provoke 90s memories of desperately trying to connect the internet to your landline, students have been witnessed holding laptops out the window, shaking devices furiously, and performing satanic rituals in an attempt to connect with the unattainable “TCDwifi”. Or should that be “TCDguest”? Or “eduroam”? Nobody knows. One invariably ends up connecting to their neighbour who has left his or her mobile access point open. It seems that “Brian/Mary/Conor’s iPhone” is carrying a large number of students through college.
The WiFi clinics in Trinity have become just that – a place where students, frazzled after refreshing their network connections for twelve hours, or suffering the anguish of failing the “Bradford Dissolvable test” over twenty times, go to seek help. It is universally accepted, however, that IS Services’ radical rebranding should ease all problems. By changing the “S” to a “T”, one would expect that IT Services will now ease the connectivity concerns of all students.
WiFi is as important as the books on the shelves in Trinity’s libraries, or the abundance of plugs that are apparently to be found in the libraries of other colleges. Yet, whatever happened over the summer – IT Services apparently “upgraded” a lot of the College’s access points – the WiFi no longer seems to work in any consistent manner for a significant subsection of students.
For Trinity to compete as a modern and innovative college, WiFi is a necessity, and especially the standard of WiFi that does not drop in and out intermittently, lose range in a shockingly tight radius, or require degrees in Computer Science just to connect.
