It was the day that all college students dread. It was the day when I felt like not being cooped-up in my dorm room doing homework. I know about the student lounge and the library, but it was cold outside so I did not want to go outside of Killingsworth. Besides that I did not want to even take off of my pajamas, so the longue on my floor was my only choice. This was also a fail because the homework I had to do required an internet connection, so I was out of luck.

Thanks to campus housing not being up-with-the-times, I had to be in my claustrophobic dorm room for hours when I really did not want to be.

Wi-Fi has been around for approximately 16 years and has become important to the lives of people in society. Just about everyone in any career needs Wi-Fi just to go about his or her daily duties. Although Wi-Fi is extremely important, it is not the only form of internet connection.

MSU has been requiring Ethernet cords in the dorm rooms, and students are limited to where they can move around their rooms. Some students do not want to be cooped up at a desk for hours studying when they could be in their beds, but the Ethernet cord does not reach far enough.

It is true that internet affects just about every student on campus, but some wonder if it is worth paying more for it.

Wi-Fi is going to be a great asset to the residents for various reasons.

First, with Wi-Fi, students will not be closed-up in their rooms doing online homework. A lot of math classes and some history classes use the Pearsonmylab program, so students have to stay enclosed in their rooms just to do homework. With Wi-Fi, students could go to the lounge and relax while doing their homework. Students will be more willing to take time out of their day.

If Wi-Fi was in the dorms, students would be able to use their new technology such as the Kindle Fire, Nook and smartphones more effectively.

The adoption of Wi-Fi in the residence halls is much overdue. Not only the housing department, but the university has a whole is behind when it comes to technology. Since most students have smartphones and need the connection to do basic things on their phone, not having Wi-Fi is a nuisance. That person would have to leave the building and go to one of the buildings with connections like the Clark Student Center, the library or the Fain Fine Arts building.

Despite Housing’s efforts, administrators have not been able to stop the rule-breaking use of routers for Wi-Fi on campus. In fact, students have bought and installed routers themselves.

According to Michael Mills, director of housing and dining, it is not cheaper to install a router.

“Currently, if a student plugs-in a wireless router, there is a very strong possibility that the router will eventually knock several students’ internet access out in the building,” Mills said. “For instance, if a student in Sunwatcher Village Building 3 plugs in a router in his or her room, eventually that router will knock all the other residents in Building 3 (and maybe more) off of the network, and there will be no internet service for all of those students.”

Residents cannot have routers because of security breaches, and because it is apparently messes with the network.

“The reason students are not allowed to plug-in routers is because when they do, these routers cause major outages due to handing out IP addresses to clients in the broadcast domain that are not consistent with the routed subnet they are on,” Mills said. “When this happens, their computers cannot talk to the network, and therefore many people do not have any internet.”

But this is not always the case– many students have routers, and the internet connections work just fine.

Minus all of the negativity, it is great that the Housing Department is finally putting Wi-Fi into the dorms. The new upgrade will definitely help to ease the tension between students, so now all of the students will not have to rebel and buy ‘illegal’ routers.