The slow Internet has been bugging students and faculty since the beginning of the semester with no signs of it speeding up anytime soon. The problem continues still as students and also “The Union” endures painfully slow connection speeds and server timeouts.

There are many factors to why this could be a problem. One reason could be that the El Camino server doesn’t block sites at all and gives students the freedom to roam around the Web wherever they please.

With online traffic not being monitored, it can definitely slow down the overall connection speeds around campus or the certain hotspot that is being accessed to. This causes problems for students especially the ones who do their homework online.

However, since there are students who attend El Camino that are not in college such as high schoolers who are in advanced classes they are being monitored when they are online. So we know that they aren’t the cause of the slow connection so we can only assume that it is the college students visiting sites they shouldn’t be visiting on school servers or streaming on their devices with Netflix, HBO GO, Showtime Anytime, etc.

High traffic and high density areas such as the Humanities Building, the Math Business and Allied Building, and the Social Science Building are where people have a lot of trouble accessing the server wirelessly. Different hotspots can only handle so much traffic at a single time.

According to an article from “The Union.” William Warren, Assistant Director of Information Technology Services, explains that the peak speed of the campus internet is 80 Megabytes per second (Mbps).

We tested the wireless connection and the average speed is currently about 54 Mbps in the Humanities Building. That is not even close to the peak speed Warren said we should be able to access. This campus needs high speed Internet to move with the times.

Warren also explains that Google Chrome should be the browser preference when surfing the Web on campus.

The El Camino website provides a map of Wi-Fi coverage on campus. According to the map there are only 23 access points for Wi-Fi compared with Cerritos College which has 38 according to their Wi-Fi coverage map on their website.

EC’s coverage compared to Santa Monica College and according to their website, “the SMC Network Services team has nearly quadrupled the wireless coverage at SMC, covering close to 95% of the campus as well simplifying the connection process.”

When looking at these statistics it is clear that something needs to be done with the wireless hotspot speeds and coverage. Our rival schools seem to be flourishing with technology while it seems like EC is still using dial-up.