Help us, help you, connect to better WiFi

SFU IT Services is committed to enhancing the digital experience for SFU students, faculty and staff. WiFi is a big part of that experience. We’ve heard some of the challenges our community has experienced and are experiencing regarding accessing services over WiFi connections and we'd like to take a moment to update you on our commitments and plans for continual improvement.

Past improvements
Since 2019, IT Services has replaced and expanded the SFU WiFi network, more than doubling WiFi access points and creating a new SFU-GUEST network. We upgraded to WiFi 6, which provides advanced security features and facilitates high speed transfer rates.

Unfortunately, during the pandemic it was difficult to assess these improvements. Now with our community back on campus, we can see the network being put through its paces and are reviewing its performance. And you are letting us know that it isn’t quite there yet.

Ongoing initiatives to improve your experience

• Heat mapping, which allows us to analyze the WiFi strength in any given space on campus, enabling us to determine the effectiveness of WiFi coverage in each location
• Standalone sensors are also being used to directly observe what’s happening where challenging, intermittent WiFi issues are being experienced
• Increasing bandwidth to meet the increased network traffic being generated by online meetings
• Upgrading network infrastructure software 2 or. more times per year
• Optimising computer operating systems for network access
• Analysing Zoom usage and network performance to optimise our configuration

Help us, help you

We’ve heard that a widely held perception is that ‘WiFi is bad’ at SFU. This is not readily apparent from our incident record, as with over 20,000 support ticket requests coming into our Service Desk since the end of August, only 0.2 per cent were specifically regarding WiFi challenges. That said, not all SFU Community members may be submitting a ticket if they experience a Wifi related incident.

Help us, help you by reporting your WiFi challenge through submitting a ticket and informing central or local IT client support. The more data we have, the better we can characterise and understand the root causes. This allows us to develop effective solutions to permanently solve the problem.

We are committed to continual improvement of our WiFi on campus. Thank you for your help and support!