“It’s incredible, the number of connections that happen per day. Over the past three years, we’ve increased the number of connections…at least three times over…Probably 4500 or 5000 different connections, and terabytes of data a week," noted MacDonald.
Device Issues
Some devices (computers, cell phones, etc…) simply don’t want to cooperate with Panthernet, but there are usually ways around it. I, for instance, have learned to give my Macbook the love and affection it needs in order to connect. Still, some days it can take a few minutes before it acknowledges Panthernet as a credible mate.
My suggestion: contact ITSS and let them know what’s up. They can probably help you fix the problem, and if it’s a bigger non-device issue than at least they can get to work fixing it.
Actual Technical Malfunctions
In other words, when stuff actually breaks. Aside from scheduled maintenance, which are always announced via Campus Notices (you can subscribe to these via this page), the actual network itself rarely goes down. Power outages can affect the network for short periods of time, and certain access points can malfunction, but these generally aren’t problems that I’ve heard students complaining about.
One issue in particular that happened earlier this semester was when the University’s LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) system went down. In short, this system takes care of all of the services that involve signing in with your student ID/Username and Pin. You might remember trying to sign into a wireless network in September, but being told that your username or password was incorrect. Silly LDAP. This was a legitimate problem that affected a lot of students for a couple of days, and even through ITSS has measures in place to stop it from happening, it still does occur once every year or two.
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So, Panthernet is not perfect, but at least we know that ITSS is working on it.
“We want it to work,” said Vessey, noting that “there’s been hundreds of thousands of dollars sunken into the network.”
If you want to submit your own complaints or simply talk to ITSS about Panthernet, you can contact them via their website. If you have particularly vulgar opinions regarding Panthernet, feel free to send them our way.
