You have had a long day of classes and decide to retire early to your room. You walk into the dorm room, say hi to your roommate and sit down to check your Moodle for the next day’s assignments. As the computer starts up, there is only a low-powered Internet signal with slow speeds. What do you do?

For most students, there would be a place to plug a landline to their laptop. This causes limited mobility in the dorm room and cords to trip over. Some students, such as freshman Zach Lofton, need the Internet to have a wireless signal for a variety of reasons.

“Some of the devices that I use need the wireless connectivity to get to the Internet,” Lofton said. He pointed out quickly that you couldn’t plug a landline into an iPod to check the ULM app.

He said, “The speeds on the wireless, when I can get it, are so slow that it may as well be dial-up.”

Lofton’s suggestions for how the wireless could be improved included having more routers in the dorms so it can reach a wider area and take less bandwidth.

While some believe the wireless is a problem, some students do not.

Sophomore psychology major Cory Williams believes that the wireless shouldn’t exist in the dorms.

“I honestly didn’t know that we even had wireless. No one can get a signal on the farthest dorms in the buildings.”

He also believes that people bringing in personal wireless routers, which Residential Life forbids, slows down the Internet for all people living in the dorms.

He said people should “stop abusing the system.”

Comcast is the company over the Internet for the dormitories.

Technician Ron Harris said, “Propositions have been made to place more routers around the dormitories to increase the radius and hold less of a load to enable higher speeds. One of the problems is that it costs money to place these routers. Another slightly more expensive option is to place directional transmitters in each room to allow every room its own private Internet signal.”