Problems have arisen with the Internet at Missouri Southern.

Steve Earney, assistant vice president for information services, said students are bringing unauthorized wireless systems into the residence halls.

“If they plug their computer into Ethernet, but they have a wireless printer, or maybe they’ve got a second PC,” Earney said, “they’re letting themselves get in, and they know the password to get into their PC.”

Earney said a signal for the wireless devices is emitted and causing interference with the campus wireless signal.

“If you’re in the next room, maybe their wireless is closer than ours to you,” he said. “It will try to log onto theirs, and you don’t have the password. And even if you did, you’d be sharing a path with their two or three computers.”

He said the problem with students bringing in wireless and already having the wireless on campus is the two interfere with each other. Earney said he read an article about the University of Texas having similar problems when it implemented wireless access on its campus.

Earney said another problem they are having is students are also bringing in routers or switches.

“When they bring it to school, which we ask them not to do,” he said, “then they interfere with each other, and that’s the main problem.”

Albert Stadler, network administrator, said a person in East Hall was found “spoofing” the network. Earney said the person was found using a router, which conflicted with the routers on campus.

“We very explicitly say don’t bring a router or a switch,” Earney said. “You can bring a hub, but not the other two. But a person brought a router, we had to find out who it was; it took a few days to find out. Sometimes they don’t even know they’re causing a problem because they’re getting good service, it’s the others that are not.”

Earney said a hub is a device that will not interfere with the University’s routers.

“We support hubs,” he said.

Earney also said many times people bring in wireless devices, but hook into the Ethernet, which causes problems with their neighbors.

Stadler said the apartments are the biggest problem right now.

“We have infinite loops going with the routers,” he said. “The routers in the apartments are also giving out wrong IP addresses.”

With the Internet, Earney said the computer center controls the bandwidth by the building. He said if a student is using all the bandwidth, it might be upped.

“Unless somebody is doing something they shouldn’t be doing, like peer-to-peer,” he said. “It’s a balancing act all the time.”

“We actually have more control with the wireless,” Stadler said. “Instead of by the building, we can do it by the user.”

Stadler said the network can also be slow due to students bringing viruses to campus.

“Most of it is self-inflicted,” he said. “They don’t have virus protection; they don’t update. Those two things help so much.”

Earney said the problems with the Internet will become better in the coming year.

“We told everybody they could use Ethernet or wireless this year,” he said. “Next year it’s going to be just wireless.”