With the start of the new semester comes a new system of wireless Internet access. On July 18, the old AirWes wireless access went offline and Internet access became encrypted.

“We’ve completely gotten rid of AirWes,” said Co-manager of Information Technology Services (ITS) Student HelpDesk Chris Pao ’13. “With AirWes, every time you got onto the Internet you had to log in and check your credentials, so now you’ll only have to log in once or twice a semester. It does it all for you. It’s much quicker, a little less cumbersome.”

ITS is also adding more wireless access points to residence halls to help combat the lag in Internet speed during high-traffic times of day.

“One of the biggest changes that everyone should notice immediately is that the speed of the Internet has increased tremendously because we’ve upped our bandwidth,” Pao said.

In addition to an increase in the available bandwidth, wireless access has been divided into three networks: “wesfacstaff” for faculty and staff, “wesstudent” for students, and “wesguest.” This separation is meant to disperse bandwidth and further increase Internet speed.

“‘Wesguest’ is open to everyone, but it’s not encouraged if you’re not a guest to use it because we’re capping that network so it can’t be abused,” Pao said. “It’s just there for emergencies or for guests.”

The changes should help alleviate past student complaints about slow, inconvenient wireless access on campus.

“It’s been coming for a while,” Pao said. “It’s been a while since we’ve had the ability to update our network. We’ll see how this goes for a couple of weeks and make changes accordingly.”

How-to guides for accessing the new networks have been posted on the Student HelpDesk blog at helpdesk.wesleyan.edu. If you have difficulties you can call the HelpDesk at (860) 685-4000 or email helpdesk@wesleyan.edu.