Students living on campus have been complaining about poor Internet quality in residence halls and La Maison Du Bayou apartments.Slade Besson, assistant director of University Computer Services, said residence halls are on their own Internet connection separate from the rest of campus. The residence halls share a 45 Mbps (megabits per second) connection to the Internet, which should allow students to use Web pages such as Facebook, MySpace and Blackboard without experiencing a decrease in speed.

However, Besson said that students playing games online might notice a decrease in speed. This is due to the type of connection required to run the games.

“I have to reset my connection every five minutes,” Kelly Granier, math education freshman and on-campus resident from Thibodaux, said. “I thought I was the only one with this problem until I asked others.”

The 45 Mbps connection the University currently has costs about $6,300 a month. The next step up in Internet speed is 100 Mbps, which would cost the University an additional $2,000 a month, plus a one-time installation fee. Upgrading to the faster speed, however, would not be a guaranteed fix to Internet slowness, Besson said.

“Looking at problem areas across all of the residence halls, the most problematic area seems to be the La Maison Du Bayou complex,” Besson said. “This complex has been particularly challenging because the University was not involved in its construction.”

The buildings also have limited Internet wiring, and adding more wiring would be expensive due to the way the buildings were constructed.

“Before the University took control over the buildings, students had very poor to no Internet signal in their rooms,” Besson said. “Once the University took over the building a couple of years ago, we had to be a little creative in the way that we provided wireless [Internet] to the buildings to try to give all rooms Internet connection.”

Wireless antennas have been placed on the exterior of the buildings as well as in attic areas to provide Internet to all residents.

Furthermore, Besson said if any on-campus residents have an Internet connection problem, they should report the issue to the housing department located in the La Maison Du Bayou office building. Housing personnel will then alert the proper party in the computer services department that there is an issue.

“I am very dependent on using the Internet in my room,” Sarah Baudoin, freshman and on-campus resident from Houma, said. “I use it daily to check grades and do homework.”

Besson said the University is aware that the computer network is an extremely important asset to everyone on campus.

“The University is constantly investing in improvements to the computer network to ensure that this asset stays ahead of the curve.