If you live in or have ever lived in the Oaks Apartments, you are probably no stranger to Wi-Fi problems.

Elon News Network released a story last year about the problems with Wi-Fi access throughout the Oaks Neighborhood. Christopher Waters, CIO and assistant vice president for Technology at Elon University, told ENN that Campus Technology Services requested the allocation of funds to upgrade Wi-Fi in the neighborhood over the next three years. 

Fortunately for Oaks residents, Wi-Fi worries might be over sooner than originally expected.

Oaks residents recently received an email from Residence Life stating that “employees of Instructional & Campus Technologies Networking team will be performing updates to rooms in Oaks A-F over the next few weeks.” These updates included improving the Wi-Fi and connectivity in all Oaks buildings.

According to Patrick Donohue, assistant CIO and director of Campus Technology Support, the funds to fix the problem were allocated after hearing from many residents about connectivity problems in the Oaks. 

Donohue said the Wi-Fi upgrade has now been completed in all Oaks Apartments in a “well thought out and executed design.”

“After hearing from the community that it was a campus wide issue...funding was shifted appropriately,” Donohue said.

Donohue said prior to the upgrade, the Oaks Neighborhood had about seven or eight access points, or APs, per building. Now, all of the buildings have at least 20 APs; Oaks D has 25 APs. 

As a result, “Oaks Apartments now have the highest density wireless per square foot on campus,” Donohue said. "The neighborhood now has brand new equipment with the latest and greatest technology behind it.”

According to Donohue, this is only the beginning of a campus wide connectivity upgrade. Campus Technology Services is now working on upgrading the campus network uplink, the "pipe" to the buildings and the backbone of the network.

Oaks will be one of the first places on campus to increase its network uplink from one gigabit per second to 10 gigabits per second. This increase in gigabits per second is a recent trend in colleges across the country.

While Donohue said they don’t expect Oaks residents to have any problems with Wi-Fi when they’re back on campus, he encourages them to let him know if they do encounter any problems at 336-278-5200.