Bullet Fed Up with Internet Outages

On Monday morning students on campus and in the surrounding area experienced Internet outages…again. Apogee confirmed via e-mail that the outage lasted from around 7:28 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and was caused by a fiber cut, though the location of the cut was not determined.

This is just another thread in the constant Internet problems that students have encountered here at UMW. About a month ago the Internet went down on a Wednesday night for about an hour, bringing the Bullet production to a halt as we all waited for access back to our final source of fact checking and our website.

Twice a year, when it is time to sign up for classes online through Eaglelink for the following semester, there are constant Internet problems as the site can’t handle the massive influx of users all at once. Many people are forced to sit and repeatedly click refresh, hoping that they are one of the lucky few who will suddenly gain access to the site. For those who aren’t lucky, they end up having to scour the website for hours on end in the coming weeks, ready to pounce should someone drops a class that they need.

It is understandable to encounter some Internet issues every once in a while, but unfortunately the problems have become much too frequent. Students are much too reliant on the Internet. To get things done, we shouldn’t have to click on Internet Explorer or Firefox and cross our fingers, hoping that it works.

The students are not the only ones who have been hurt by the Internet woes, as professors have had the Internet down during classes and were unable to access PowerPoints they had previously emailed to themselves or they are unable to access online sources.

There has to be a way for Apogee to provide better, more reliable Internet service. The campus is just too dependent on a trustworthy, fast Internet for these issues to continue. If Apogee cannot provide a better service, then maybe it’s time the University switches to a company who can.