The recent weakness of the University of Winnipeg’s wireless Internet connection can be blamed on two things: A virus that confuses the wireless network and - believe it or not - WebCT.

Viruses in the network were said to be ruled out in the Sept. 24 issue of The Uniter. There are no viruses in the network, but there is a virus affecting the network from students’ laptops.

Richard Nakoneczny, executive director of the Technology Solutions Centre, said there’s a virus in the computers of many students which convinces the network that a single computer is actually several hundred.

“It happens instantaneously,” he said.

This virus is unique in that it goes beyond affecting the infected computer to affect the online network the computer is connected to. This results in all the computers on the network receiving less bandwidth and slowing down.

To address the problem, the University increased its bandwidth by 20 per cent but due to the virus, the bandwidth increase didn’t help at all.

“By the time the screen refreshed, all that bandwidth was chewed up,” Nakoneczny said.

The Technology Solutions Centre will have a better idea of how they’ll solve the problem in about a week.

The problems with the school’s network have left some students unprepared for class.

“I see my friends struggling,” said Cody Dietrich, a second-year kinesiology student. “One of my friends was trying to get an article for his class. He wanted to print it so he could have it for that class that day but he couldn’t.”

The Powerland computer store on campus is receiving a lot of complaints from students, even though they don’t run the wireless network.

“It’s because we’re visible,” said employee Leif Norman while fiddling with the inside of a computer.

But it’s not just this virus affecting the network. The WebCT site is overwhelming the University of Winnipeg between classes, said Nakoneczny.

“What we thought would be a remote learning tool ended up being a lot for the system.”

Even last year WebCT wasn’t a burden on the network, but with more professors using WebCT for their classes, the increase of students logging on at school has put stress on the network.

Nakoneczny said casual and social use of websites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube don’t help the bandwidth problem, but they aren’t as strong contributors to the bandwidth problem as WebCT.

The campus’ landline Internet went down for about 15 minutes during the afternoon of Tuesday, Oct. 20. That was caused by an MTS failure, unrelated to the U of W network.

Published in Volume 64, Number 9 of The Uniter (October 29, 2009)