Overview/Introduction
This Knowledge Base article will walk you through some common troubleshooting steps that users can take to help resolve wireless issues themselves. If you still are having wireless issues after attempting the troubleshooting steps below or don't see one for your specific problem please skip down to the 'Still Having Trouble' portion at the bottom of the article.
Article Index
Sometimes your device might get stuck talking to a wireless router that's farther away from you and toggling your wi-fi connection off and on again can reset its connection so it wants to talk to the closer router. It's usually recommended to turn it off for about thirty seconds before turning it back on again.
A full restart (power off and on) of the device could also help with bugs that come up when its been powered on for to long.
For devices like streaming sticks, such as roku's, firesticks, smart tv's etc we recommend unplugging the device from power for ten minutes before turning it on again as these devices in particular have issues getting stuck to the wireless.
With the wider adoption of technology in our daily lives there can in fact be a downside to having to much of it, especially when there are to many devices gathered in a location and connecting to the same wireless access point. All of these devices like your Alexa's, smart tv's, printers, smart led bulbs like nano leafs, etc are broadcasting some kind of signal whether wireless, bluetooth, etc. This can introduce interference when your device is trying to talk to the Ursinus wireless as it has to invisibly move through this chatter in order to talk to the access point. Think of it as trying to swim in a very turbulent ocean. One thing that could help is shutting down a number of devices to help clear the air waves and reduce the chatter. The less devices talking the easier it is for the signal to reach the access point.
Here at Ursinus we have two wireless networks, that fit different use cases for our users depending on who they are, and what kind of device they are trying to connect to the network. This article will walk you through the steps to make sure you are connecting to the correct network.
Sometimes when looking up the mac address in order to register your device you will get two mac address shown in the network menu. One mac might be called the wired, wlan, or lan and the other wireless. Always make sure to register the wireless mac address of the device you are trying to register for use on the Ursinus Public wireless network. Otherwise you will need to go into your portal and delete the entry for the wired mac address. Please do this before attempting to register the wireless mac address as the system will get confused and the device won't connect properly. In which case you will have to make the device forget the Ursinus Public network. Delete both entries from the registration portal. Power the device off completely. Wait 10 minutes. Then attempt to register then connect the device again using these instructions here.
Knowing both of the Ursinus Wireless networks can often times cause the device to want to flip flop between them. You might think this is a good thing, and that your device will always have a good connection then; but actually this can have the opposite effect. It's like trying to talk to two people at once, the device wants to talk to both wireless networks but everything just gets jumbled and nothing gets communicated.
Follow this article if you need to know how to forget a network.
Usually you can spot our wi-fi routers cause they look like square white boxes with led lights hanging on the ceiling or walls. If you notice poor wi-fi bars look around and try to spot one and move closer to see if the connection improves. In dorm rooms a wireless router is placed to supply connectivity to multiple rooms, so don't be alarmed if you don't have one in your room specifically; it should be in one of the adjoining rooms to yours.
Here at Ursinus we've seen this issue crop up multiple times. You might think those discounted string lights you can get on Amazon look really cool in your dorm room. Yet actually depending on the quality of the led string lights they can throw out interference and turn your room into a wi-fi blocking Faraday cage. We recommend if you have such lights that you unplug them from the wall for a day or two to see if they might be the reason why your device was having the issue connecting.
Note: It is also a very bad idea to wrap those lights around an access point in your room. This will almost certainly create a Faraday cage scenario.
Like the LED lights, a microwave can also interfere with your wi-fi connection. Depending on the quality of the microwave it could have less shielding and thus produce more interference. And you may only notice the bad wi-fi connection sporadically as this usually only happens when the microwave is on and cooking. If you are having sporadic connection issues and happen to have a microwave we recommend turning it on and trying to access something on the wireless like a frequented web page or try to stream something. If you notice problems only while the microwave is on then that is probably the root cause.
If you bring in a printer for personal use we recommend to turn off the wireless function on the printer and instead use a wired cable directly between the laptop and printer; this should look like a basic cord with a usb plug on the end, and not an Ethernet cord.
Why turn off the wireless function on the printer? This is do to the fact that printers throw out a lot of interference, they are chatty by nature, this includes on wireless as well and to the point that they can cannibalize an entire wireless channel making it difficult for devices to connect.
This article goes into more depth about why you cannot bring a wireless router on to campus and hook it up. But if you happen to be in a dorm room that is not on main street (as you will more than likely see neighboring routers from local residents) and take a look at the wireless routers list on your device and notice some that are not called Ursinus Secure/Ursinus Public it's plausible that someone has set up there own wireless router in your vicinity. And the reason why you are having a poor wi-fi experience. If you suspect someone has brought in a personal wireless router use the link provided to submit your concern to Ursinus IT.
NOTE: It is at the sole discretion of the Ursinus IT team to disable network ports of which are believed to have a personal router connected to it, and to contact a manager, or rez life counselor to address the issue further.
If your device is experiencing slower than usual, or even no connection and you happen to be using a VPN. Make sure it is updated to the latest version. And in the case of experiencing slower speeds try disabling it. While using a VPN it routes the traffic through certain tunnels for security reasons meaning your data could be taking a longer trip to its destination and why you are seeing slower speeds. Not to mention the data is most likely being encrypted as well which will add another penalty to the speed as that data needs to be encrypted when it leaves your device and de-encrypted once it reaches the destination.
Certain streaming devices have the ability to clear the cache of their apps. If you notice a particular app with issues see if doing this will help. We also recommend doing a restart of the device after doing this as well.
NOTE: Make sure to look up a guide for your particular device in order to know how to do this properly. All devices are different and the menu settings will vary.
Still Having Trouble?
If you continue to still have trouble connecting to the campus wireless network please submit a ticket to tech support using the following LINK.